editors and folks who are controlling the flow of information who are deciding what is true and what's not. we shifted it where everybody on the network is generating news and sharing ideas. deciding that this is relevant or not. there are some significant is some significant practicing and beginning to appear. and so i think because it's like facebook. it is the size of an entire medium now. it's almost as big as the web itself. it's a huge impact over what we read and consume.

to show how that works over the rebbe. they can modify and expand on. facebook is a platform that is owned by a private company and yet it is the size of the internet or the web in many ways. when we want to change something and want to make something like facebook less vulnerable to fake news it's going to the last week or two. you can ask facebook to change it. it's not an open standard that we could change. that's something that would have to wrestle with over the next few years. >> we have a president elect to likes his twitter account. >> i had been a longtime user of twitter. i think there is an argument that without twitter he wouldn't had one. he may not had been able to one the republican race.

it just gave him in many ways he decided he doesn't. and what happens in the white house as can gonna be fascinating. there are parts of the race where the people took the phone away from him so he could tweet anymore. apparently he is just to keep tweeting from the oval office. >> and he puts it in a whole new world. and mister trump will get those special accounts. the next call for stephen johnson. >> they were very interested in communication. one of the things i wrote about in the adams jefferson

letters the famous correspondent and they had fallen out as most people probably knew. and that at the end of their lives they start this epic correspondence. the way they begin the conversation as they are nerdy now to about how fast the their letters are getting to each other. your letter only got here in six days. a very high bandwidth. they would've been shocked but they would've quickly figured it out. david you're on with stephen johnson. >> my grandfather started a toy company in 1920 and he have a philosophy and hero he wrote a lot about which was bringing reality into the land of make-believe.

i never knew him. i would have argued that we need to keep play in reality separate. so he believed that by giving children actual miniature real things his work was in the smithsonian we went to a lot of trouble to make his toys so real that he said children instead of playing with a fantasy object would now be playing with the real object and therefore become more realistic. and go on to lead corporations and do practical things. i would have argued with him that it should be open ended and not interrupted. and making them more pragmatic.

select in playspace is a really interesting one. just in the history of games there is a big divide between games that are strictly limited. i remember when my kids were young and we played candyland with them. >> there's no choice in this game. you can't make a decision you have to pick a card and had to move your piece no matter what it says. it's the ultimate kind of constraint game. they have no free well in the scheme. and then you go to the other extreme where you are inventing a whole world and it's all about changing the rules i think developmentally

there are different games at different times. the other question that you raise as the blurring of the boundaries between the real world and the play world. that is something that were gonna see more going to see more and more of and we saw the explosion of it with pokemon go. three of a game that is on some levels very frivolous and not that important in any functional way. but it brought all of these people out into the world exploring my kids were begging to go for a walk for the first time in their lives. they wanted to go outside. they were so going for a walk and getting exercise. this is one of the big arguments of wonderland. when we look at what people do for fun it's often a predictor of more serious changes coming to society.

you will find of the future wherever people are having the most fun. we will look back in ten years and so when virtual information has been superimposed we will say this started with pokemon go. now we do as part of ordinary life but it began in a game. >> virtual reality has taken off this year has in it? yes a couple of major devices have come out. thinking that if we went back and looked at the early 19th century illusion shows like this haunted house show. and there was a 360-degree painting. and hundreds of other kinds of shows. i think those are a preview of coming attractions that will

come to us in virtual reality. and what they have they weren't really about characters you went to the movie. or to feel empathy. they were about being thrown into a space and immersing yourself in the sensory overload of that space and being frightened or amazed or feeling you are transported somewhere but they were narratives and i think when people look at virtual reality they think how do we translate video games to the new form. they might be instructive. the example is if james cameron were making a titanic the whole story line of the stowaway with the well-to-do lady. you just want to be on the ship. you want to run around and

jump off the edge. you and care so much about the characters it would be about the environment and i think that's what were to learn. but again looking back at the older forms of play and it's very illustrative. >> i have a background in mathematics and i will have also taught introductory mathematics to adults. and i've become convinced first of all that the mathematical talent requires in part a spirit of play and playing with conceptual worlds and manipulating them. a willingness to play with mathematical ideas when they're first introduced. they play with numbers and what can you do with numbers. and i'd be interested in your

comments on the relationships between mathematics and play and how to teach it and the rest of that. >> that is a is a great observation. there's a story in the book about the first wearable computer can of us computer small enough that you could feel it on your body. the computers and a lot of fields. they built this device they figured out the crazy way of calculating about how long it took before it started to settle and you can make predictions based on that. and they successfully did it and it was so far from being conceivable because this was in the late 50s when they were it wasn't against the

law. i talk about that in the book. he was just incredibly playful. and almost kind of a philosopher in the way. if you went over to his house you have this toy room and he would love to juggle and he would get on his unicycle and he would juggle and he would talk about mathematical theorems. there is a rich history in that. children come into the world wired to play in the other thing they come into the world to do is invent new rules this is a beautiful thing about young kids. it's not just like her to to play this game according to the rules there and say what are the roles can be this time. that kind of thinking is a very high level form. let's figure out what the rules are to be.

whether it will be fun or not. let's modify the rules as we go. that's almost like that. based on the feedback we get from the system. as another way. val and austin texas. we will try ashland in sacramento. the third time is a charm. i think so.

preface my question. my wife and i work many years for fedex and most people think of as a transportation company in reality when people talk to us about it were really not where management information company. we found that with real-time information if you know where things are at all times things will work the right way. that is profits that you talk about the different platforms. they used to be traditional media but people have trusted them less and less and so they've that got to platforms like facebook which i have and i don't use. most of our information we get from c-span. i know if i watch it i'm in to get accurate information right from the people who are the source of what i'm trying to find out. so i'm wondering how all of that stuff fits together.

i agree with your endorsement. i hope it. the ideas that they were to give you direct access to what was going on. it would lead to more democratic participation it has gone up around that. it was the access to the data -- to the leader. and more people talking about it on social media which makes it more personable. it also creates a possibility for distortion there. and we probably we probably need to get that balance a little bit .

here is a book. it's called wonderland. how play made the modern world. it's very interesting and colorful and busy. steven johnson is the author thinks for being with us on book tv. >> and the live in the live coverage of the miami book fair continues author dave barry a local down here in florida is speaking next in the book tv room. his newest book best state ever. a florida man descends his homeland.