The Glass Bead Game

While looking into the last blog the writer mentioned a link with a fictional novel called the glass bead game.

The Glass Bead Game takes place at an unspecified date, centuries into the future.

The rules of the game are only alluded to, and are so sophisticated that they are not easy to imagine. Playing the game well requires years of hard study of music, mathematics, and cultural history. Essentially the game is an abstract synthesis of all arts and scholarship. It proceeds by players making deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics.

The reason this is relevant is because i think the 'game' draws some very neat parallels with our current situation of sustainable systems. implementing sustainable systems requires linking several areas of expertise. connecting them in such a way that they compliment each other and exist as a single almost perfect system.

The glass bead game deals with similar issues of finding the links between seemingly unrelated topics.