In the concluding essay of Breaking Smart Season 1, I quoted Seb Paquet's snowclone of Arthur C. Clarke's line about advanced technology being like magic: any sufficiently advanced kind of work is indistinguishable from play.

This is not one of those predictions that just happens by itself, like a solar eclipse. It is one of those "future is easier to invent than predict" self-fulfilling prophecies, where it only happens if enough people start believing in it in an interesting way, and somebody actually invents it. Just as the industrial age was full of "workflows" and philosophies of workflows like "Taylorism" and "Agile" and "Lean", the Digital Age needs playflows, and philosophies of playflows. These won't just happen by themselves. They need inventing.

I don't have inventions to offer here (though I'm working on it), but I think I have a good handle on the right questions to ask. So for those of you interested in the future of work, here is something for you to think about: the playflow challenge.

A quick announcement before we get to that: I just added the first Special Topics video to the Breaking Smart Season 1 course, on the most common question I get asked: "Will software eat jobs?" I've never done more than a casual live Q&A 1-minute answer, so I figured it would be worth documenting a more careful long answer, which as it turned out, took me about an hour to articulate. The video will be public for the next 24 hours, after which only registered course participants will be able to view it.

Now on to the playflow challenge, which as it happens is the central known unknown in the "will software eat jobs" question.

1/ There is currently a growing, dim recognition of the ongoing convergence of work and play. It is slow and patchy as yet, and very unevenly distributed, but it's taking root.

2/ But much of the excitement around the trend is wishful thinking (imagining work lose the parts you don't like in merging with play), delusional (playing pure games and imagining it is work), or cynical (much of "gamification").

3/ There is also an element of ignorance and entitlement around interest in play-flow convergence. It's easy to get caught up in play-work convergence to the point where you forget that much of the world is still involved in doing hard, necessary, unpleasant work that needs to be done.

4/ There is not as much solid thinking and work on the concept as there needs to be. Play-flow convergence is NOT about masking or automating away the unpleasant aspects of work, and adding "fun" to what remains. That's shallow, and usually cynical gamification.

5/ Converged play-work will have a play-like soul within a work-like body. It is not that there will be no pain or unpleasantness. Recall actual play as a child. There were bruises, tears and fights on the playground.

6/ The play-like soul of the future of work will manifest in a different way: work becoming continuously challenging and therefore stimulating. Work requiring imagination. Work acquiring ludic qualities. Work fostering deep immersion.

7/ In Mass Flourishing, Edmund Phelps shows, through arguments and empirical data, that people enjoy work when it has exactly these qualities. In industrial work, it is rare and limited to a privileged few most of the time. "Mass" flourishing tends to be short-lived.

8/ To a significant extent, whether a behavior is work or play depends on the intent and attendant sensibility, not the artifacts or behaviors. It is play if you mean it as play. This does not mean it is not serious, or lacks harsh consequences for mistakes.

9/ Play for children is often associated with safety. Good play environments are often designed to be safe-fail environments, rather than fail-safe. Stimulating without being stifling. Bounded consequences, but not risk-free.

10/ For adults, play environments are sometimes designed that way -- think war-gaming or flying simulations, or EMT training using medical dummies. But in general, play-like work is simply work done with a play-like attitude.

11/ This does not mean it isn't serious or that it is sloppy. If you were designing a play-work converged environment for doctors, you'd want better surgery outcomes as the first consideration. Introducing play-like elements will only make sense if you can do that.