Juggleball

Way back in high school I read an article that said that one get a full body workout if they juggled as they run. This is the same principle as the exercise machines where both your hands and feet move.

During college I attended several lectures in which the professor declare a distaste for football. Football is a simulated war ... blah, blah, blah.

I would occasionally juggle run and realized that one could make a sport of this.

The most interesting aspect of juggling is learning to toss the ball to others. To do this players have to learn to coordinate their movements and communicate when they are ready to toss the ball.

After several lectures on the evils of football, I decided to invent a game that did what the professors wanted.

The game worked as follows: People would meet at a baseball diamond. They would run around the diamond, infield and outfield where they would complete juggle tosses with other players.

The scoring of the game is unconvential. Most sports are competitive. The sports pit people against each other to see which ones come out on top.

I created juggleball around the concept of a marketplace. In the design, three or more teams would show up at a meet. The players in the team would run around the field and distribute the balls at different stations. Which ever team was best at distributing their collection of balls would win the game.

To win this game, the teams would have to develop strategies to cooperate with other teams.

Which ever team was best at cooperating would win the game.

While football is a simulation of a war. Juggleball was a simulation of a market.

The game actually endes up highlighting one of the most interesting aspects of a market.

A free market is not about competition. A free market is about learning to cooperate with others.

In juggleball people would compete to show who was best at cooperating.

I've felt compelled to develop this sport through the years because I believe that the underlying message of the game is very important.

Anyway, I expended effort trying to get people to play the game.

I should mention. I live in Salt Lake City . Unfortunately, people in this city are rather mean.

Lets face it. Utah is run by the LDS Church. The reception I received was: That man is juggling. He must be gay. People like you aren't allowed in our city. Leave.

The culture war mentality rips us apart. The idea is that moving your arms when you run gives a full body workout. Learning to juggle builds hand-eye coordination. Completing juggling tosses improves people's ability to communicate and work with others.

The final contention is that it might be possible to organize a sport around cooperation. In which case people would compete in their ability to cooperate.

There is nothing culture war about this.

The hostility that I faced for discussing an idea was amazing.

I still kept working on the idea.

I happen to like maps. In the next version of the game I gave numbers to the juggleballs. The teams would have juggleballs. They would take them to a venue. The venue would record the numbers on the balls (possibly with an RFID reader). The team would leave with different balls and play at the next venue.

Each venue has a location with GPS coordinates. One could then make an interesting map of where the balls travel. It is a little bit like the game WheresGeorge.

I tried to talk up this idea and again I was kicked down with a mindboggling intense hostility.

Finally, in 2003, I decided to register the domain Juggleball.com. Here is the whois record.

This time I decided to create a game played with cellphones where people checked in at locations.

Again a solid wall of hostility.

NOTE: A company called FourSquare pulled this off in 2008. I guess they live in a place where people aren't as mean as they are in Utah.

In the early days of the Teaparty Movement, there was a great many people talking about free markets. I realized that these groups would need a fund raising mechanism. I designed a fundraising component for Juggle Ball called Juggle Art ... which I will discuss later.

BTW, the fundraising component of this game is really interesting. I won't get into that yet.

The Teaparty was sub-sumed into the conservative movement and Conservatives are opposed to innovative ideas.

I tried to present the idea to Conservatives.

Again, I faced another wall of intense hatred.

When Fitbit became the rage, I decided to invent another version of the game built around a fitness tracker.

Again, I got no interest in the effort.

Worst of all, my fitbit broke. The silicon band of the fitbit caused me to sweat. The sweat got into the unit and it died after just 6 months.

Come on Fitbit, if your unit can't hold up to sweat; you shouldn't be marketing it as fitness product.

Anyway, this game has been though a dozen reconfigurations. I registered the SteemIt account @juggleball. I will use the tag #juggleball for posts about the project.