What Brian Eno knows about learning (that we've forgotten)

Brian Eno - ambient music pioneer, U2 producer, visual artist - has a theory in his new book What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory that stopped me cold: "Play is how children learn; art is how adults play."*

A five-year-old crashes toy cars to understand consequence. But what happens to that play impulse as we grow up?

Eno believes we just rename it.

When you're lost in a novel, you're playing with someone else's life. Galleries let you play with new ways of seeing.
Theatre allows you to step into a character’s environment, their world.

But here's his key insight: Art works like a flight simulator.

The reason we have flight simulators isn't so pilots can have fun—it's so they can practice without the real-world consequences. Experience failure, learn from it, try again.

Through art, you can experience an unhappy marriage by reading about it.
Feel the terror of revolutionary France without losing your head.

I never thought about it this way before, but then Eno is known for his Oblique Strategies.

So what if we built that flight simulator for the decisions that actually shape your work?

That's what we're building with Involver. Instead of reading case studies, you step into them. Make the calls. Navigate the tensions. See where your instincts lead.

The best learning happens when you're playing—even if we call it something else.