There is an inquisitive child inside us all. Sometimes we let it show, and sometimes we bury it in email and seemingly adult responsibilities. Luckily, the curious child escapes sometimes – perhaps to take over our hand while we are on the phone to play with a pen and enjoy the way that it spins on the smooth top of our desk – but we mostly keep it in check, always finding one more important thing to do instead of making time to fool around purely for the sake of it. Compared to all of our many responsibilities, it seems ridiculous to make time for something which has no tangible, measurable, defensible value. But just as a letter grade provides no useful measure of a child in school, neither does a rational analysis of the value of fooling around – the merits are purely intrinsic, the importance often invisible until many years later.

Pick up a nearby object, and feel the weight of it in your hand. You could make a list of questions to quantify the object; #1 How many ways does it stand up? #2 What side does it like to spin on? #3… and so forth, but doing so is an extrinsic process of evaluation and when you had your list complete, you would either set it and the object aside, or you could start to answer each of the questions in turn – but making the list forces us into an analytical understanding of the object. The alternative, and the one most often taken by children, is to just start fooling around with the thing itself – exploring the characteristics of the object without enumerating the questions. In the first approach, the internal model we make of the object is quantified by the questions we ask, in the second approach, the model is more nuanced and the memory of it is in the context of the experience instead of the questions.

[Dangling Camera, 10s exposure]

I have a camera that I love. By all extrinsic measurements, it’s not that great a camera, but it has some qualities that I have discovered only after carrying it for a few years. These are properties that would never show up on a feature list you could use to compare it to another camera: it’s a perfectly rectangular brick when it is closed, it has a pleasing heft that I can feel in my shirt pocket, it dangles nicely on the nylon lanyard, it has a sliding lock (which does not actually lock) that divides the loop of the lanyard into two smaller loops of infinitely variable size, the battery is spring-loaded so that it pops up when you open the hatch, the flash has a piece of paper taped over it to reduce the intensity. Because of these qualities I carry my camera with me often, and even if I am not taking a picture, it exists as both a physical invitation to play and a reminder that there is something worth looking at wherever I am.

[Night Beetle]

I learned the word “phoretic” this morning because I took a picture of a beetle with a mite riding on it. The mite hangs out with the beetle because the beetle is a better hunter – the mite gobbles up crumbs while the beetle eats. I have, over the years, taken dozens of pictures of insects that visit the back porch, without ever pausing to consider “why” – I take the pictures because I am curious, and that is sufficient justification in my world. For proof of value I need only point out that I might never otherwise have learned the word “phoretic” or any of the other forms of commensalism.

We don’t always know the reason we are doing something, or we may know the reason but not be able to explain it. I have learned over the years at Tinkering School not to ask “What are you doing?” when I see someone engaged in an activity that seems extrinsically pointless. The very questioning of the activity forces the doer to analyze the doing and can completely destroy the nascent value of the experience. If all doing must have a reason, then we force our current interpretation of the value onto an activity whose value may only be understandable in another context at another time. Children in school ask “why do I have to learn Algebra?” and are told “one day it may save your life.” I am certain that this could be said of every moment spent “fooling around” as well.

Our Tinkering School friend Steve Davee, from the Opal Charter School in Portland, Oregon first mentioned the idea of a “provocation” as a way of describing something that instigates an area of inquiry. He collects provocations for use in his classroom to engage kids in mathematics, geography, science, and so on. I liked the notion so much I thought I would start recording them as they occurred to me – then it completely slipped my mind until I was listening to Episode #136 of This American Life, wherein David Sedaris describes a game. So this is not my idea, but I like the way that it could be used to get kids to think about what really defines a sense of place.

Where Are You?
Pick a random moment in the day, some time when you least expect it, and stop. Notice where your feet are, and remember that exact spot – you cannot move more than 10 feet from there, until you can solve one riddle: Using only what you can see, the conversations and noises you can hear, the odors that you smell, and the breezes and sunshine that you feel, can you determine what country, and city you are in? No fair asking people leading questions, you must use the clues that are around you at this exact spot.

For example, sitting here at my kitchen table, I note than almost all of the pictures and papers on my refrigerator have English words on them, so I am probably in one of the English-speaking countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or the US. Closer examination of the papers reveals a water delivery schedule from Arrowhead Water Company in South San Francisco – aha! I’m in the US, probably in California, somewhere near or in the city of South San Francisco. And so it goes.

To get you started, set the alarm on your watch or cell phone for 97 minutes from now. When the alarm goes off – the game begins. Let me know when you figure out where you are and how you did it.