PlayTheory｜游乐能理论场

This essay traces a shift in how we understand energy, use, and agency—from centralized systems and consumer identities toward distributed, bodily, and generative forms of participation. Drawing on energy history, design theory, political philosophy, and Indigenous ethics, it argues that being a “user” is not a passive role but a political position. To use is to act, to produce, and to take responsibility across time. As a user, I produce energy.

When it comes to clean energy, what comes to mind? Solar power, wind power, hydropower? Biomass, geothermal, tidal energy? Or are there other possibilities?

This article has a whopping 20,000 words, packed with loads of funny pictures and all sorts of random stuff. Definitely one to bookmark...

This article was initially framed around Playground Without Walls as a case study. It proposes a systemic structural hypothesis: if children’s physical activity and play can be reimagined as a form of public energy production—then could play itself become a basis for reconfiguring infrastructural logics, mechanisms of benefit-sharing, and even ethics of care?

In “Play Is a Right—and a Power,” I examine how playgrounds have evolved from 19th-century factories to today’s over-controlled “safety cages,” and share how PlayPower’s child-centered, modular “behavioral energy” approach turns overlooked spaces into dynamic learning ecosystems. By treating children’s actions, emotions, and imagination as tangible energy, we not only illuminate playgrounds—but also empower kids as real co-creators of their communities. Join me in rethinking

Under Section 42-A of the National Energy Citizenship Act, every resident is graded by a Playability Quotient (PLQ). Children, thanks to superior kinetic capacity, enter at Tier 1; adults must earn civic rights through verified acts of recreational labour and emotional output. A citizen’s Energy Passport, badge set and provisional access to the Reproductive Eligibility Assessment Scheme are issued at onboarding. All behaviour is archived in the Central Energy Records Bu

How can we rethink energy not as extraction, but as care? This piece explores how HappyPower draws on ecofeminist thinking to imagine a soft, body-based energy revolution—playful, distributed, and deeply relational.

When a typhoon plunged rural Haikou into darkness, children kept laughing on a powerless playground. That moment lit a question in our...