According to [Seb's Open Research] a specialist is bringing the Bead Game to blogspace. See HipBone takes to the blogosphere

"My favorite Glass Bead Game specialist has started a weblog! Glass Beads and Complex Problems collects "materials relating to the analytic and game design work of Charles Cameron".

Charles writes in an introductory post::

The complex problems I'll be blogging mostly have to do with religious violence.

The glass beads reference is to the idea of the Glass Bead Game in Hermann Hesse's novel, Magister Ludi. I am interested in the application of some ideas drawn from Hesse's Game to the visual representation (mapping) of complex problems, and am developing an analytic style based on a minimum of two data-points in conjunction, in which symmetries and asymmetries are particularly fruitful indicators.

In a way, the Glass Bead Game is a knowledge representation tool. I've always had a hunch that it could be used to make conflicting world views explicit and connect them, making it easier for people to examine other world views than their own. It's nice to see someone who's actively digging into the idea. Here are more recent ramblings of mine about the Glass Bead Game:

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I , too, was moved by the Glass Bead Game that was described in Majester Ludi. Since then [ I had just graduated from college, many years ago] I have been actively fascinated with the possibility of constructing general representational schemas which, when understood, allow the replacement of conflict, incomprehension and fear with a wisdom which allows positive action. The possibility that large differences if bridged could result in large and positive consequences was an Aha! given to me by Hesse.

If my memory serves the Bead Game was an enjoyable and creative process that allowed cross-disciplinary (e.g., music and biology, anthropology and religion, ecology and accounting) communication and synthesis. Charles Cameron, a modern adherent, summarizes the features of the Bead Game in greater depth at his web site (http://et.sdsu.edu/dclough/digitalbeadgame). There are multiple modern examples that try to capture what Hesse was describing. Among his offered examples are :

"Mark Line's Waldzell Game approach includes the development of a "constructed language" for play, which allows players from different languages and cultures a common and unambiguous language in which to structure their moves.", and

"Gail Sullivan's webpage is aptly called Glass Bead Game Central. Her own game utilizes the "Bliss Bibliographic Classification System" for the cross-disciplinary indexing of ideas via beads, and the (unrelated) system known as "Blissymbolics" for calligraphy. It is Still under development." and

"Brainstorms (BS for short) founded by Howard Reingold is a "culture word association" game played by a very diverse, international community via email and the Internet. While people don't HAVE to explain or justify their associations/connections, everyone is accessible by email, and if one's curiosity is piqued you can always query a poster about their rationale."

Massive difference and the catastrophic response to it [adrenaline-sourced] would be replaced by a game-mediated translation process which, in turn , would allow those that persisted to learn to understand each other and eventually to co-operate. The unspannable divide is bridged via the game.

Granting that there is/can be such a bead game, how big a divide can it span? The differences of disciplines, the differences of cultures?

IMHO differences between cultures have a larger scale and involve more dimensions (in addition to the intellectual and linguistic dimensions, they also involveemotional, instinctual and social forces the demands and urgencies of which would add exponentially to the complications of conflict resolution) than those involved in differences between disciplines. I think that we have to at least consider the possibility that there are cultures which are, even given our best and most profound actions, incommensurate.

Assuming that after due consideration we have denied that cultures are incommensurate. What features of the difference resolution process, The Bead Game being a stand-in for all such processes, are critical to its success?

The potential gains and losses of interdisciplinary and intercultural conflicts are huge (from simply 'vast' to 'a matter of life-or-death for millions', respectively). If there is a chance that the process can be constructed we must pursue it.