Buckleitner, W., 2010. Book Review: Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software.  American Journal of Play, Spring 2010, page 485-486.

Download the review as a PDF

Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software
by Mizuko Ito
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009. References, index, photographs, tables. 234 pp. $24.95 cloth. ISBN: 978026203352

If you’re looking for a thrilling tale of corporate espionage and rags-to-riches (and rags-to-rags) careers, you need look
no further than the business of making children’s software over the past two decades. In Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software, cultural anthropologist Mizuko Ito opens the door for a closer look at children and
technology during this time period. Limited in scope for reasons described below, the book breaks new ground in the way it attempts to interpret what happened during this period of optimism and frustration, when publishers were competing to produce and market 979 commercial products per year during the peak year (2001) and trying to market them in retail settings.

Before you start reading this book, it helps to refresh your social-cultural jargon, which Ito applies generously throughout the five chapters. She does so because the book relies heavily on two dissertations and a handful of published journal articles.

Here, for example, is how Ito frames her ambitious task: “This work draws from an interdisciplinary methodological frame that weds ethnography with approaches in technology and media studies that trace highly distributed and technological mediated forms of culture and practice” (p. 16). Whoo! While it is possible to forgive the wedding of such vast constructs in the interior pages, the use of two words in the title-cultural and history-cannot be easily passed over without more scrutiny.

On the surface, they suggest a comprehensive and, perhaps, impartial accounting of events. At the very least, a clear definition of “whose culture” and “how much history” should be provided.

Unfortunately, the source material for the historical analysis of the book is relatively limited. It includes two years
of Family PC magazine (1999 and 2000), plus searches on “children’s software” in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Ito also uses some Web sites she unfortunately does not specifically reference (p. 26), a fact that does little to bolster the validity of this work. Granted, for example, the children’s software business in the late 1990s was terribly amorphous, and Ito accurately describes the enterprise as “the ongoing struggle, negotiation and contestation between different actors and social and cultural forces” (p. 3). Still, the author could have drawn on a more comprehensive array of sources to describe more fully the enterprise and its times.

In order to remain true to her title, Ito would have needed to define properly the social and cultural forces shaping the field. These forces included a bipolar Mac/ Windows publishing culture, the growing influence of video games, and the dawn of the Internet. Mix into this the differing theories on how children learn and a potpourri of marketing efforts, and you have the recipe for a blurry mess. Describing these important elements would have
provided crucial context.
The book also fails to mention some
key individuals and companies who
shaped this story. Missing is any mention
of Purple Moon’s Brenda Laurel,
Britain’s Peter Kindersley (or any other
European Union or Asian company for
that matter), and IBM’s well-documented
purchase of Edmark. Part of this welldocumented
purchase resulted in the
end of Donna Stanger’s famous Thinkin’
Things series, and the end of Stanger’s
collaborative effort with Joyce Hakansson
which had produced one of the most
successful children’s software titles of all
time: Millie’s Math House (1993-present).
Microsoft’s ActiMates Early Learning
System (1997) is another interesting
story untold, as well as the tale of the
indelible influence of the multibilliondollar
toy industry, with its associated
boy/girl, pink/blue culture.

These missing
events include a failed but fascinating alliance
between Fisher-Price and Compaq
that resulted in the 1996 Wonder Tools
Keyboard. While Davidson & Associates
founder Jan Davidson is mentioned, the
information about her comes through an
improperly referenced secondary source.
Last but certainly not least, the author
overlooks the early work of Knowledge
Adventure’s Bill Gross, who single-handedly
started the grade-based shootout
with The Learning Company when he
released JumpStart Kindergarten.
The book gains some traction in the
case studies of children using popular
titles like SimCity, The Magic School Bus
and The Island of Dr. Brain at Michael
Cole’s Fifth Dimension after-school center
in Los Angeles. Here, the writing is
better grounded in both play theory and
the reality of childhood, but it comes at
the expense of reading like a dissertation.
It also focuses exclusively on just a few
better-known titles. Ito acknowledges this
limitation: “My work in the 5thD has allowed
me only a small glimpse into these
domains” (p. 141).
In the anthropological discussions of
the software advertisements, intended as
illustrative, Ito delivers on her promise
to provide some cultural interpretation
of this period of time. While this section
may fascinate industry insiders, Ito once
again becomes selective, perhaps in order
to support the idea of “engineering” the
repackaged learning units.

Another of the book’s high points is
the not-to-be-missed interviews with developers,
including a wonderful coffeeshop
conversation with Ann McCormick
Piestrup, one of the founders of The
Learning Company, who provides a ringside
view of the early days.
Viewed as a selection of case studies
and interviews, Ito’s book skillfully fits a
sociocultural framework to what is certainly
a messy business. The author lays
a path that others will hopefully follow.
While the historical title overshoots the
mark, the work is an important step in
better understanding the relationship
between children and technology in the
late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

- Warren Buckleitner, Editor, Children’s
Technology Review

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