Francois

This article is packed with thought

Art and games need rules conventions and spectators. They must stand forth from the over-all situation as models of it in order for the equality of play to persist. Mcluhan posits that art/games and life are separate, so war is not a game, the stock-market is not a game, because not everyone knows the rules.

I can think of a game I played recently called Flux, where as one played one changed the rules for winning the game (rule changes being part of the game.) Another game I have played often with friends is called Mao or Mow, where the winner of a round makes up a rule that stays for the rest of the game.

Is the rule then that the players makes up the rules as they go along? One is also reminded of Calvinball from the cartoon strip "Calvin and Hobbes." Another game where the rules change constantly.

I think (and I remember we had a consensus in class) that his characterization of baseball as a dying sport was off base (so to speak.)

Mcluhan states: "American football is nonpositional, and any or all of the players can switch to any role during play." I'm not sure that Baseball and Football are so different in their specializiation. Quarterbacks are very different from Recievers which are very different from Linebackers.

Technically a linebacker could fill the role of a wide reciever, but it's rather unlikely.

Unless a sport is one on one, I'm pretty sure that there will always be specializations. This is one interesting thing about playing games such as football or basketball as a one on one game on consoles or the computer. One must switch from avatar to avatar like a posessing ghost or demon. You follow the ball, and the computer must reposition the rest of the players.

As I said in class, this article would be much less confusing if I could pin down exactly what a tribal society is compared to pre-industrial western society, compared to post-industrial society.

Also the views of such things probably would be different in 1964. The view of Japan and Japanese business culture must have been very different then.