I kept thinking, as I read these articles, how deeply ingrained play and games are in learning itself, and how the dangers that come along with it are enhanced as much as the benefits by new technology. I’m thinking mostly of the Daisley piece, where the playful nature of the students is opened up, facilitating conversation in some instances, and shutting down it down with vicious comments in the next breath. Daisley acknowledges some of the hard questions, like “is abuse part of the game?” but doesn’t answer them all in-depth. I suspect that’s because her aim is to achieve acceptance of games and play as legitimate learning activities, and she doesn’t have the necessary space to gain acceptance for games and talk about handling the destructive behavior they enable. It is our job in the present, I suppose, to account for and develop strategies for handling those behaviors. Like Aristotle says of rhetoric, just because rhetoric can be used for bad purposes doesn’t make it unworthy of study. If anything, it makes it all the more paramount to study things that can cause as much harm as good so we can learn the difference between the two and make good decisions in our lives.