Today it is rainy and wet. As I sit in the big summer room on our farm, my mind echoes with memorable sounds of similar rainy days in my childhood at our grandparents’ house where in the large family room a few of us –myself, my siblings, and other members of our extended family - would pull out a game (monopoly or pictionary), or draw our chairs up to a table for a game of cards, or sitting on the floor while-away an hour or two playing double-solitaire or spit. The echoes speak to physical engagement – the sound of feet running to start up the game, the shouting as game play became intense, the laughter that spilled out of us at regular intervals -- all integral to indoor play. That was then. Today the seductive lure of solitary engagement with the electronic screen has drawn us away from that sociable play. Guests visit our farm with their laptops and game machines, and often between meal times on rainy days, we find the summer room filled with an array of children and adults, each focused in their separate media worlds.

As Sherry Turkle vividly explores in “Life on the Screen,” the seductive allure the screen with the computer and the network beyond offers a powerful engagement with the mindful self, this self-immersive engagement opens some doors, while it closes others. Sometimes I feel that I have become a prisoner of text: my eyes weary from on-screen reading long for distant horizons, my fingers and wrists tired from typing long to be part of movable arms, and my body, constricted, almost deformed by the hours spent holding stead in a singular posture, longs for intellectual engagements that invite stretching, gesturing, dancing.

Much of the solitary intensity associated with the computer derives not from the ideals of the activity but from limitations in the input and display modes of the device. As we explore the paradigm of the Media Fabric, we imagine diverse ways of engaging with media. Today it is not hard to imagine that, in our peripatetic mode, we can engage in visual conversations using small mobile devices. Some what more futuristic is a personalized display that would allow us to mix computer and real images in front of our eyes. Still another approach, and one suggested by the summer room scenario is a media PlayTable.

In her current research, Ali Mazalek is inventing some new sensing technology to realize a sociable mode of PlayTable. As her team works on new sensing technologies, they are also concerned with fabricating the table with a look that is at once compellingly modern but also speaks to modes of play we are all familiar with such as chess and monopoly.. Given a beautiful imaging table that can be as connected as today’s PC, a set of pucks and other tangible objects that convey instructions, can you imagine what it would be like to collaboratively build a family album with several family members gathered around the table? Of course, this table could be networked with another table so extended family could share updates. Or if you prefer the table might provide a visualization for a massivly multiplayer gaming scenario where people collect pucks, design and trade player characters. I leave it to you and Ali to speculate about other engagements..