Sustainability and Scrabble

Lately, since I've been following Saorise and his pilgrimage for FreeCommunity and reading my daily doses of generosity stories at helpothers.org, I've been thinking about everything in terms of different possibilities for the exchange of goods and services as a means toward a more sustainable world. Yesterday, this article in the New York Times touched on something near and dear to my heart: online Scrabble. I'll admit it, when I'm not working, writing for HumanKind or wearing one of my many "mom hats," I'm playing online Scrabble, most recently on the site in question in the article.

I'm hoping you're still with me after I gave you that Scrabble link. If you are, I bet you're wondering how I can go from sustainability and the freeconomy to Scrabble. So am I, but let's give it a go: For several years, I have "offered" my coaching services to private clients for whatever they can offer in return. I ask them three questions to help them determine what that is: "What is it worth to you? What would you pay someone else? What can you give?" After considering these questions, these wonderful, good humans find something they can offer. I don't turn anyone down. All have been generous both with their resources and their appreciation.

This is not a new practice. Exchange communities have been around since humans began interacting together in groups. Recent examples of this are RadioHead's online, pay-what-you-want release of In Rainbows, which, though it's over now, will generate ripples through the music industry for quite a while, and Open Source software, which has had its own evolution.

Maybe this classifies me as a Pollyanna, but my belief is that the majority of people are inherently generous and don't want to dupe anyone out of their fair share of profits, kudos, appreciation, or livelihood. My other belief, as you know, is that those few who might be the opposite get far more press than the generous ones (except, here, of course).

I would love to see Hasbro and the Agarwalla brothers reach some way out-of-the-box to offer the game as more and more people hook up world wide to waste their time (did I say that?) in the spirit of global gamery. I would be willing to donate (a small amount). I would love to imagine that Hasbro and the Brothers A would be willing to offer access to the game for whatever benefit they and the players think is fair -- without anyone getting too greedy.

Am I too naive or is this possible? "Possible," my favorite word, is a Bingo(a word that uses all your letters) in Scrabble if you can use one letter on the board. Big points for everyone.

Comments

[Loafy]

Hi, fellow Blitz addict! I agree with you and hope this can be worked out peaceably without depriving all of us across the globe of this unique form of online camaraderie.

The chatting between games is light and upbeat, and day after day we see familiar players from different cities, countries and continents.

I'd also like to point out that online Scrabble does not use cardboard, wood and plastic. So it's better for the environment!