The opposite of the Lord of the Flies
Lådbilslandet is an obscure theme park at the Northern end of Öland, an obscure island off the Southern coast of Sweden.
The place is designed for kids. There’s nothing there for adults. Except that this is Sweden, so there’s obligatory filter coffee.
The name means Box Car Land and the centrepiece is Driving School. But this is a school with no lessons and only one rule:
The kids are in charge.
As you queue with your small people, you are repeatedly reminded that adults have no say here.
OK, there is one other rule: bring your box car back when the little light goes on after about 10 minutes. But that’s really it.
When they pass through the adult-proof barrier, the kids enter a world of their own. And what a beautifully realised world it is! Roads, bridges, junctions, buildings… everything looks just like normal roads, with all the right street markings.
And the vehicles they can drive include cars, lorries, trucks, ambulances, buses…
They’ve got it all — just half the size.
My eldest hopped in the nearest car; my youngest stubbornly waited 15 minutes so he could drive the bus.
“I can’t look at you now daddy, from I’m concentrating on driving!”
Once in, they choose where to go and what to do.
They are fully in control.
Knowing my kids’ propensity for chaos, I expected bumper car wildness and destructive experimentation.
Nope – it just worked.
I can’t express how uncanny it feels watching kids as young as three politely and expertly navigating a road system without any instruction at all.
It’s like a miniature robot town designed to model authentic traffic flow.
Or it’s like a scaled up version of the tiny cities at Legoland — the ones with the little electric cars and boats all running like clockwork, controlled by computers.
Except there are no computers, algorithms or clockwork. It’s all controlled by small humans.
The traffic flows. They work out how to handle oncoming traffic. How to do roundabouts. What to do when you’re two abreast on a bridge facing an oncoming lorry.
And chaos resolutely fails to ensue.
There’s the occasional gentle collision but they sort it out. No lawyers need get involved.
Now this is the point in the article when the grown up rules of the Internet dictate I should crowbar in the #UX, #business or #life lesson to take from this.
It could be something about how environment is more important than rules; how people step up when you give them responsibility; how emergent properties arise from complex systems…
Nah.
I’m going to take notice of the other rule. The little light has come on so I’m going to bring this article back to the depot.
Then I’m going to have a big ice cream.
Nee naw nee naw.