Experience and knowledge: The creative potential of playful action for technological development

Playful action — undirected, interactive, boundary-transgressing and scenic — provides creative potential for the process of technological development. This thesis is developed with reference to John Dewey. In the course of the argument experience is assigned an indispensable position as a method of gaining knowledge. The argument presented grants an innovative status to experience-based, playful action, opposed to the hegemony of the technical-economical logic, which stresses exactness, unambiguity and measurability. The hegemony of the technical-economical logic in the Western industrialized countries is responsible for the discreditation of playful action. But the price to be paid is to go without the innovative impulses which are essential elements of playful action.