The philosophy behind the project
Global society is facing the arrival of a storm of innovations and disruptive applications as a fallout of the exponentially developing technological, process that has been accelerating since the turn of the current century. The changes will be very profound at an economic, cultural, social, political level and these trends will also poses challenges in the educational fields. Overlapping this scenario are the widely anticipated consequences of climate change, as well as the unforeseen and unpredictable impacts of the SARS COV2 pandemic that entered the scene as a black swan in a preexistent very fluid situation. These phenomena, which are already underway, lead to a widespread situation of great insecurity and destabilization; but also, as in all deep crises, great opportunities for changes and evolution. Among human activities and occupations, those based on creative and lateral thinking skills will be those probably least at risk from Artificial Intelligence (AI) , Machine Learning and automation-induced technological unemployment; and those most useful for imagining the necessary innovative solutions (being those that more difficultly or later in time, will be supplanted by automation).An aspect that is too much neglected in the process of digitization, virtualization and automation of society is the urgent need to develop children’s minds towards an artistic, creative and mathematical direction and an education to the use of digital technologies in a proactive and creative way. Greater efforts should be made to reduce the risk of passivation of natural intelligence along a digital transition ( digital addiction ) based on the increasingly pervasive presence of artificial intelligences; mainly whereas the standard lifestyle in several parts of the world is starting to be characterized by remote social interactions through virtual means and with reduced physical contacts.
Since the first months in the cradle, when not only baby cells but also its mind is pulsing with growing potential, the toy is for a baby, after the body and the voice of the mother, the first sensory stimulus, growth and exploration of tangible external world, i.e. the first learning tool.In the past, toys were made by family members or by a village carpenter, or – for the most fortunate ones – commissioned to specialized local craftsmen capable of shaping and sculpting wood, molding and coloring ceramic and clay, modeling and casting metals: the toy was a sort of age-old meme, a public cultural heritage. Once upon a time, toys also reflected the culture and the story of place where they are created and used; and at the same time were handed down as a private and intimate object, from father to his sons, and so on, between generations.
Today, toys are mostly manufactured and purchased, and too much similar to each other, without soul and personality and lacking harmonic forms or beauty messages, missing the link to local cultures. Even toys are today the victims and expression of the culture of disposability, without history or conceptual or artistic elaboration, often a vector of the current or desired or induced lifestyle by the films, video games or cartoons marketing; and moreover, too often toys are today very far from European cultural and artistic heritage. They draw inspiration for example from North American ( anorexic dolls) or Japanese (monsters, ninja, anime) creations; or by a Chinese designer who arranges the parts at random, or works consciously on planned obsolescence projects.
Recently, there is also the trend of a progressive trivialization of the variegated world of bricks (Lego or Lego alike) that were, at the beginning, simple units that could be assembled together to compose different objects each time – and therefore representing exceptional tools for the development of the child’s creativity. Now bricks are just pieces to assembly for recreating scenarios, or figures, or subjects already determined by the manufacturer itself.
These trends cause losing along the way the spirit of diversity, which is the basis of the development of the ability to create and imagine; and if it is true that the human being, from the cradle and for all the time of developmental age, is “shaped” according to the environment in which he grows, if children are born and develop surrounded by mass-produced and unsightly objects (and places), without geometries and proportions, there is the risk of incapacity to recognize, recreate and conceive beauty and harmony.
