purchased in roughly equal numbers by both boys and girls, Gak satisfies the three chief requirements for an element from popular, kids culture to be considered an evolutionary indicator: it is loved by kids, hated by their parents, and emblematic of a non-apocalyptic strategy for the future.
We can only hope that kids growing up playing with Gak will understand the world a bit differently than those of us who played Chutes and Ladders. For implicit in the style and context of this new sort of play are many of the leaps in consciousness that will be required for us to navigate our path, as individuals and maybe even a people, through the terrain ahead. Games like Chutes and Ladders were perfect training for a world that understood itself in terms of beginnings, middles, and endings. It was a simple rat race, based on the luck of a dice roll, with
