[See, Specifications for the Small Educational Delivery System (SEDS) and Creating the David Brearley Constitution Center]
The phrase, “weaving a symphony of faith” is more than a motto; rather it is a spiritual commitment to this world such that each step of the way shall be placed in the loom of God’s hands.
A Game Industry of Tomorrow: Polymath Pinball
“Polymath Pinball” is a euphemism for the Small Educational Delivery System, or SEDS, the next step in the evolution of costly wizardry showcased in today’s museums.
Small modular spaces are conceived of as ‘pocket Epcots.’ 1 They might range from a free-standing column display panel to a museum-sized theater allowing for ‘fun-house effects’ of atmospheric, sound & motion stability, holography, etc. Small and modular, the SEDS is essentially transportable, such that a private owner might bring their module from school to school, along with evening talks and entertainment, rather like the old-time travelling circus.
Just as a trip to Epcot is considered entertainment, exploring the world’s many universes of knowledge shall be a way to win tokens (NFTs) and build your ‘knowledge wallet’ as proof of your ability to stand up to the artificial intelligences of this new world. Ideally, Polymath Pinball could become as familiar to the public as the next fast-food franchise –representing an everyday recreational option, like going to the gym, or trying out a new restaurant. “I heard that there’s a new Polymath Pinball Place down at Bigbee’s shopping center, should we check it out?”
Rather than being conceived as a knowledge delivery system, the SEDS is designed as a highly engaging competitive game in which a player can accumulate a large “wallet” of tokens. These would represent to some level the player’s facility in navigating through vast universes of human knowledge. For while the SEDS provides traditional museum-type narrative displays, it also develops skills in recognizing and classifying relationships between facts, and rewards participants for exploring beyond the initial display as they move throughout many stories built into the “museum.” Not only that, but tokens earned in through the exploration of one SEDS are maintained by the active player, and can be used to help unlock relational gates on other platforms i
The world of harmonics may not seem connected to the world of medicine to you or I, but the accomplished SEDS player will quickly be able to explain the commonalities for people working in either of these worlds — scientific or historic, as well as common ‘heuristics’ (rules of thumb) they depend on. Even more importantly, they shall be able to quickly work out ways in which the priorities of various cultures of work shall be in conflict.
The accomplished SEDS player shall quickly decouple the power of information from that of wisdom. In the end, it is this that is behind the church’s hope for both developing and introducing the SEDS to tomorrow’s world. Yet to the cynic, it would seem that the introduction of SEDS is worshiping the idols of knowledge by creating a host of knowledge ‘wizards’ whose leadership can compete with the inroads of A.I. We are certainly at a watershed in technological history, and so there is no reason why thus should not correlate to a watershed in human history. And it is the church that may lead the way.
There is every reason to believe that tomorrow’s children shall distinguish spiritual strength from physical power. Obtaining knowledge and skill are not to be ends in themselves—which is to say, the deeply-held emotional quest for truth shall be understood as a by-product of wisdom, an art of living – of ethics – rather than knowledge. At the same time, the gifts of learning shall not be down-played, for the necessity of living in a practical world shall always leave levels of skill and knowledge as prerequisite to that same “art of ethical living.”
Developing the SEDS Platform
SEDS program development will be created and wholly owned by independent B-Corporations,2 raising development capital from shareholders who, as part-owners of the company, will receive the SEDS software. In this sense, raising funds for a SEDS is rather like raising capital for a movie from the public, rather than high-ticket investors. By holding onto a small number of shares, as shareholders and part-owners of this very costly educational entertainment package, shareholders will retain update and maintenance on their software, but by selling a portion of their shares, they can afford the latest hardware on which to run their own educational gaming system. Thus neighborhood facilities such as public libraries, hospitals, gyms, firehouses, and even houses of worship will be able to house an educational gaming systems for a small up-front investment that can eventually pay back the cost of the installation. Meanwhile, we can envision thousands of neighborhood investors covering the high up-front design costs of this new industry. 3
The SEDS System however, as opposed to an individual SEDS module, shall rest on a platform provided by a not-for-profit organization controlling certification standards for the underlying gaming system. It is this which allows players to win tokens that can be used on any certified SEDS within the network. This not-for-profit organization4 will also operate the block-chain from which the tokens are produced and transitioned, as well as the avatars of players are tracked. It is these service from which the family brand will sustain itself as a not-for-profit body.
The SEDS “game” (see Specifying a SEDS System) is based around the values from discovering and classifying various types of relationships between universes of meaning and discourse, e.g. inter-connections between professional and technical fields of knowledge. The ‘black belt’ player who has, based on their wallet of tokens, proven skills in making such connections will have become, in the old sense of the term, a “polymath,” able to skip from one world of knowledge to another with ease. A player’s skill will of course clearly prove their value as a knowledge worker to any traditional organization. However, the software structure of each game is to encourage “open” face-to-face interactions as the most reliable source of ‘random’ and ‘unique’ variables on which to generate values in the game and earn tokens. Thus, we shall be creating a vast international population of polymaths who realize that value is to be found in discovering the ‘free radical, ‘the other,’ the ‘freely given,’ and not in the knowledge itself.
Any accomplished player, however, will have demonstrated their value to a traditional organization, either as a diligent learner or problem-solver, so that one’s SEDS system “wallet” will in-part signify a certification of knowledge and a particular brand of skill-set similar to, but outside of the certifications of traditional education.
Summary
It would seem, from a quick cynical look, that a church is introducing a fun new pastime of high-tech bingo to keep itself in business. This is not the case at all. Neither is it ‘fighting fire with fire,’ by taking up the tools of technology to boost lagging attendance. There are plenty of churches who are growing without plugging technology. Rather, we are acknowledging the scope and power of the internet over the world of knowledge, and the dominance of electronic media over paper. We are simply bringing a deep knowledge of the power of spirit to this new platform, knowing that God’s spirit will prevail —Not through the electronic medium, but through the new facility which it has to bring people back together. One can participate and learn the lessons of the SEDS without becoming a gamer at all — for the SEDS space can be taken as a high-tech museum exhibit. Simply to observe a platform in which the relationships of knowledge serve as the source of value creation is to understand the role of marketplaces and money. In this sense, the mere existence of gamers and non-gamers can provide a new sense of freedom—recognition that the world of game tokens (NFTs) is also the basis of our world of money is an important realization for any one of the faithful.
An accomplished SEDS player will in fact become a ‘polymath,‘ able to discover creative links between dozens of academic disciplines, subtly erasing boundaries between intellectual cultures that have been unable, alone, to stem the tide of anti-intellectualism that has swept across modernity.5 A real polymath pinball player may well become addicted to the pastime like many a gamer, but rather than become an Ivory Tower know-it-all, will rather learn the game of “polymath pinball” in the sense of a piano, whose “ivories” are woven together in an infinite variety –while played altogether, competing with each other simultaneously produce only cacophony. As the practical truths behind the game become more apparent, many a young child will decide they can achieve the same facility and wisdom with the world on their own, without the help of the game at all.
- The design of the SEDS exhibit follows that of Disneyland ‘experiences,’ which consider the participant/players as exhibit variables. (see Specifications …)The “game” is designed so that it cannot be played in isolation, but depends on multiple players to provide a randomness to an individual gamer’s trajectory similar to that of pinball. ↩︎
- The B-Corporation is a rather recent development in corporate law. It is for-profit organization defined by a legal structure [and called a ‘benefit corporation’] and certified for its social impact by B Lab, a global non-profit organization. ↩︎
- The individual SEDS ‘housing’ or hardware, however, may be supplied by traditional for-profit manufacturers, and the individual SEDS developer will have to arrive at balance between gaming system program development and system hardware costs. ↩︎
- to be provisionally known as DSDS.org (Distributed SEDS Development System) ↩︎
- Wolfgang Kohler (principal founder of Gestalt psychology) describes the “Krise der Wissenschaft” that led to the rise of the 3rd Reich in his book The Place of Value in a World of Facts (1938) ↩︎