If to operate a machine is to operate like a machine, then we operate not only with each other like machines, we opearte each other like machines. And if a machine is`most effective when it has no effect, then we opearte each other in such a way that we reach the outcome desired - in such a way that nothing happens.

All weapons are designed to affect others without affecting ourselves, to make others answerable to the technology we control. Weapons are the equipment of finite games designed in such a way that they do not maximize the play but eliminate it. Weapons are meant not to win contest but to eliminate them. Killers are not victors; they are unopposed competitors, players without a game, living contradictions. - James P. Carse

To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as though nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful with each other we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence. It is, in fact, seriousness that closes itself to consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcome of open possibility. To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself