Huizinga's children: Play and technology in twentieth century Dutch cultural criticism (from the 1930s to the 1960s)

This article traces the development of critical thought about the socio-political impact of technology in the Netherlands between the 1920s and the 1960s, from the perspective of thinkers and movements that developed theories about play and put these into practice. The historian Johan Huizinga, the painter Constant Nieuwenhuys and the Provo youth movement shared the conviction that play was a crucial element in society. In the late 1930s, Huizinga argued that play, which he believed was at the basis of all culture, was gradually suppressed in modern societies, as a consequence of the ascendancy of utility and technological efficiency as dominant goals. A much more optimistic view of the future of play and technology was developed after World War II, first in the utopian designs of Nieuwenhuys and then, from the middle of the 1960s, in more practical proposals developed by the Provo youth movement and its successor, the Kabouter Partij. This article describes an intellectual trajectory from deep cultural pessimism and technological determinism towards a utopian constructivist view, issuing in what was later called ‘appropriate technology’.