Antisocial media

So today I’ve been reading a bit more about:

How social media is destroying our brains!

One of my favourite comics noted a particular divide in society long ago (back in ‘97!); people who love technology and people who… don’t.

Technofear

Highlighted in the Guardian and the Telegraph this week, this is a story that comes up quite a lot lately.

Turkle’s thesis is simple: technology is threatening to dominate our lives and make us less human

Oh, see how teh technomologies are ruining us as a species!! (They write on their laptops, seeing through their glasses, whilst recovering from operations last week or popping an aspirin for that headache).

Give us a break.

The different kinds of communication that people are using have become something that scares people

What, it scares some people, therefore it’s evil? What is this, the dark ages? It’s a shame we’ve not come far enough to realise that fear generally just leads to prejudice and is not a sensible reason to shun technology.

It’s no new phenomenon, of course. The population has always suffered from technofear and not always from the least informed members of society. For example, even a fictional* Socrates got his toga in a twist over the arrival of books if we’re to trust his student, Plato (from Dialogues of Plato, Phaedrus, p. 275):

this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories…

Yet, amazingly, even with the ubiquitous written word, we still manage to retain a fair bit of info in our minds. Indeed, people learn tremendous amounts from articles in their many forms. It may not be everyone’s favourite medium – audiobooks, TV, seminars and so on are going strong because not everyone learns/enjoys things in the same ways. But we’d all agree books aren’t evil, I think (I guess it depends on the content!).

they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

Yeah, I know a lot of people like that too, Socrates. Funnily enough, they tend to read less.

*This looks like an interesting book; here, on the myth that led to Socrates’ character as depicted by Plato in Phaedrus - a king who refuses the gift of writing from the god Thoth, for fear of causing forgetfulness, and the origins of the ‘mnemonic’!

On the subject of interesting books, Martin has just linked me to this post by Jonah Lehrer – a review of a book called The Shallows that came out last year, exploring how the internet might be affecting our brains. Lehrer also cites Phaedrus as an early ‘technological scare’ and muses on man’s relationship with technology – in reality and fiction – the nature of multitasking and impact of video games. A highly recommended post.

Virtual Reality

The main argument seems to be that by talking to each other through the internet, people are departing from reality and suffering as a result.

it is actually isolating us from real human interactions in a cyber-reality that is a poor imitation of the real world

I’m not sure what kind of world some of these people think they live in. Do they strike up a conversation with every stranger that walks past? Have they ever travelled the London Underground? Not talking to people you don’t know isn’t considered odd. So why is talking to people you do know, who don’t happen to be in your physical vicinity, so very upsetting?

Enter examples of sitting at the dinner table, at funerals, in restaurants whilst texting. Sorry, but if someone lacks manners, that’s probably one of many manifestations and it would be easy to shake a finger at some parents…

If you didn’t turn off the TV at dinner time or explain why answering your phone in the middle of a conversation isn’t acceptable; if you didn’t catch that rudeness early, then don’t be surprised if it continues and gets worse.

But it’s not exclusively young people – far from it! I’d say 95% of the phones going off in lectures/talks belong to the more senior members of the audience, for example. Perhaps another case of lack of understanding/acceptance of technology causing more of the problems than the technology itself.

I hate these things, I keep forgetting I even have it! I don’t know it’s mine that’s ringing most of the time - we’ve all heard that one!

Yes, most of us have had a collision with someone staring at their phone. But is it any better if they’re staring at a newspaper or a book? No. Especially if you’re in the middle of the road at the time (yes, man on Clerkenwell road reading the Metro, I’m thinking of you!!). These things have always happened, they always will; it’s people, not the technology. We can moan and then laugh about it but don’t blame the gadgets, it’s pointless!

Twitter and FB don’t connect people, they isolate them from reality, say a rising number of academics http://bit.ly/eyayqJ – define reality

Thanks to @colmmu for returning me to the original point of this section.

Technojoy

One of the things that irks me most about these objectors is that they so rarely seem to consider people who are incapable of that peculiar idea of  real social interaction, or at least find it difficult – due to living with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), for example.

I have many friends with varying degrees of Asperger’s or simply find it difficult/unpleasant to interact with people directly – that doesn’t mean they don’t like people at all or despise all forms of human contact, though.

I’ve said before that I used to prefer to be on my own, didn’t have many friends – but a busy chat room provided a comfortable environment to talk to people of a range of ages, living in different countries. Talking to people online completely rekindled my interest in humanity and social interaction as a whole.

Of course that will not be the case for everyone. But I begrudge attacks on all social media on the premise that it prevents socialising (clue’s in the name?!) and the cultivation of interpersonal skills.

I suppose the problem is getting the people who do benefit from social media in touch with those who shun it; when one group finds it hard to talk directly to people and the other will only ever do that, that’s quite a barrier.

It’s not just a benefit to autistic people, though. It’s still not a well-understood condition and, like technology itself, often feared by the ignorant. By providing such individuals with the means to talk to others and, for example, explain their reactions and feelings, other people can better understand them and learn how best to approach them as friends, which is mutually beneficial.

It can be daunting to try to talk to someone whose ideas of acceptable social actions differ from yours quite drastically – that works both ways. I know people online who are great fun to talk to because of their sense of humour and intellectual brilliance. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to get to know them because I sometimes do find it much harder to talk to them ‘in real life’.

Sadly, critics of social media don’t seem to grasp this and the many other benefits of platforms like Twitter and Facebook, which I have sung the praises of before and will continue to do so.

Times, they are a-changing; move with them or be left behind!

—-

Links:

Marc Cortez‘s take on the latest complaints.

The different kinds of communication that people are using have become something that scares people

Ponderment

Apologies

Hello! Sorry for general silence of late.

Excuses: being generally busy, dealing with some things that aren’t for publishing on the internet right now, our flat flooding last week and not having caught up on lost sleep – et cetera.

This is just a quickie to let you know I’m still here (because you’re obviously flailing around as if suddenly blind in my absence) and to make a few mini-points.

Bleachgate update

Some big things have been happening lately. The BBC even covered it!

First I recommend checking up on Rhys’ blog because apparently, Mr Jim Humble himself has come out of hiding to grace the skeptical blogosphere with his presence. It’s nice to be able to engage, supposedly, with the person we’ve all been talking about at last, but the claims are as staggeringly wrong and dangerous as ever.

Spaces to watch

Righteous Indignation podcast (plus Michael‘s thoughts about it) – Jim Humble, the man himself, speaks! Keep an ear out for more exciting stuff to come…

The Lay Scientist at the Guardian. Keep an eye out for  similar treats.

Basically keep all the senses primed for bleach-related goings-on.

Social Media

A tweet from onlydanno that I saw today got me thinking:

Facebook is where you lie to people you know. Twitter is where you’re honest to strangers.

9:37 PM Oct 3rd via SimplyTweet

Twitter

Most people do just say what they think on Twitter, which is great – I love honesty, but there are now countless examples of why that can be a ‘bad‘ thing – the Twitter joke trial and Gillian McKeith’s PR idiocy, for example; I’ve also had to apologise for  accidentally offending people.

There is something lovely about it. Seeing ‘real’ thoughts, not what’s been adjusted/censored for acceptability. It’s wonderful to put something out there that perhaps you never had the guts to say before and to launch into conversations with people you’ve never met who somewhat or totally (dis)agree with you.

It has parallels with stand-up comedy (and indeed many of my favourite people to ‘follow’ are fantastic comedians – professionally and not) and I’ve mentioned before how seeing what people are thinking (e.g. twitterfalls at events) can be amusing, enlightening but also slightly disturbing.

There is after all often good reason for not saying aloud what immediately comes to mind.

The exception to this is of course the fake account; for comedy purposes or otherwise. Many Twitter accounts are semi or completely anonymous and devoted to made-up goings-on. Again some of my favourites are fabrications, characters. So the honesty of these is usually questionable if not unapplicable.

Facebook

I’m not sure I completely agree with the sentiment by itself; it’s a neat yin/yang concept,  that statement, but I don’t think it really applies to me. I don’t really lie and if I do it’s limited to the minimal and (I reckon) necessary.

Facebook is, by and large, limited to interaction with people you know. Sure you can add ‘randoms’ but the people I’ve never met, who are on my friend list, I still count as friends because we’ve been interacting online for a long time. I’ve been chatting to people I’ve not actually met through the internet for… 13 years now and I consider myself a reasonable judge of character.

</Tangent>

I think Facebook has just become quite impersonal. The group functionality has been reduced, it’s being stripped down to ‘likes’ that don’t really say much about you except that you enjoy some observational comedy – these groups always existed; the I turn my pillow over to feel the cold side! and A cup of tea makes everything better kind. But now it’s everything, from your favourite books/bands/films to activities. You can’t put it in your own words, you just like a page.

So I’d say if it is lying, it’s more by omission, having been reduced to something more universally applicable – that’s understandable, since it’s gone from being a university-based system to a worldwide phenomenon. To appeal to the masses it must cater for them. That means general sweeping statements. Perhaps I’d call it astrological social networking - make the kind of statements that are vague enough to ring true for almost everyone.

Twitbook

I use both, happily, to keep in touch with people, make new friends and share things. I guess you’d call it networking. Not everyone uses them for that, not everyone has to.

I’ve met more people ‘from Twitter’ in the last year or so than I’ve ever met ‘from the internet’ – almost all have been fantastic and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to meet like-minded individuals and so on. Socially and professionally, I think it’s brilliant.

Facebook helps me keep in touch with my friends. We all find phone calls intrusive at times, texts can be forgotten, numbers change, e-mails are plagued by spam and letter-writing seems pre-historic to most (though it’s still fun at times, it’s not good for arranging a dinner party tomorrow night).

Both allow me to access and share interesting, important, funny and pointless links to articles/videos/images etc. – I get almost all my news from social networks now and that means from a range of sources so I feel like I’m finally outside the closed network of news media (owned by a few with very specific interests) that most are stuck inside offline.

Links

So to finish, regarding my last point, here are some interesting things from my recent browsing history that I’d like to share, which you may not have seen if you follow my ranting neither on Twitter nor Facebook.

Jamie Oliver on TED – please spare 20 minutes for this. I’ve written about Jamie before and this is well worth the watch; great to see his work gain international recognition.

A calendar everyone needs to buy.

The Science is Vital campaign – please sign! Writing to your MP even better! Attending Saturday’s march: 1 million points (I can’t go, sadly).

Druidry is officially a religion. Time to go one way or the other: either everything anyone comes up with that based on nothing observably true gets religious status (and the tax breaks that go with it) or nothing gets any special treatment simply because it’s a belief system that you can’t prove is rubbish. Suggest the latter.

Creationist/ID nutters continue to infest UK.

Marmite have made some chocolate (this would be a fun birthday present, hinthint – actually never mind, I don’t want 10 bars of the stuff!!)

Turn off Facebook Places so your friends can’t tell other people where you are! This app is a bit worrying so just turn it off if you’re unsure.

I may have just written about how Twitter is more honest (and therefore perhaps a bit better) than Facebook, but I’m not sure this is really the way to redress the balance.

 

 

Cogito ergo sum

These are (finally) my recollections of Westminster Skeptics, 7/6/10.

Biometrics and Identification

Belle de Jour (Dr. Brooke Magnanti) came to speak to us and was welcomed warmly.

Brooke is a scientist and supported herself during her doctoral research by becoming a sex worker in London. She documented her experiences anonymously then revealed her true identity in 2009. Obviously people tend to be surprised to hear that a scientist worked as a prostitute, but challenging such attitudes was (I assume) one of her aims.

She came to WSitP to talk not about those adventures but about the science, psychology and challenges of personal identification.

Human Identification in Forensic Science

We have a desire for authenticity, yet want privacy for ourselves – we protest ID cards and CCTV, put up net curtains in our houses – but gossip magazines fly off the shelves (though I wish they didn’t) and rumour mills never fail to be on overdrive.

Why do we want to know about others? That information is often irrelevant; trivial, social things. Here we’re talking the government and personal info.

Identity is how we define ourselves.

‘Unique’ identifiers have been used for a long time. The Bertillon system used a number of them to keep track of who’d been in prison. However, one case destroyed its perceived reliability.

Kansas jailed Will West (a murderer) but in 1903 one William West was sentenced; they looked almost exactly the same and indeed their Bertillon measurements differed only minutely. This discredited the system as it was and led to the use of fingerprinting.

How unique?

So how many people were compared to establish that fingerprints are unique to every individual?

130!

There have been attempts to write image analysis software but computer error makes it unacceptable in court. So it’s down to people, but human fallibility is ever-present.

“Why worry if you have nothing to hide?”

Sometimes innocent people get caught out by imperfect systems (Brooke gives Shirley McKie as an example). Innocent until proven guilty is (or is meant to be) the foundation of the legal system – we ought to be aware of ID measures in place, the possibilities of wrongful accusation and what to do about it.

British citizens don’t need to carry ID cards but everyone else does. Yet no card-readers actually operate in this country. The card contains data from passport, visa, fingerprints. The Government has vowed to scrap ID cards but what about all the information already on file?

Brooke managed to lose everything in her card application (at a bus stop!) – all she had to do to prove her identity was to go to the US embassy with another US citizen vouching for her. So the cards seem fairly pointless, all in all.

What about DNA?

The National DNA Database does not store all 3 billion base pairs (‘letters’) of individual genomes. You can’t store the full sequence; it’s too expensive, time-consuming and generally unacceptable. It’s an issue of privacy.

We don’t want the government knowing more about ourselves than we do.

Instead it uses 20 ‘short tandem repeats’ – relatively small lengths of DNA that are made up of repeat sequences that vary from person to person.

How acceptable is biometrics?

There is no perfect system. Considerations include:

Universality (can it be applied to everyone?)

Uniqueness

Permanence (can it change with time? E.g. retinal scans)

Collectability (how easy is it to access and record?)

Performance (how reproducible?)

Acceptability (likelihood of consent)

Circumvention (ease of avoidance e.g. US embassy incident)

We identify ourselves in broad terms. Race is not an official biological category but we still use it! Still people are assuming that populations don’t and can’t mix. We know there’s more intra -than inter-race variation. It’s scientific fact.

People have moved on to the more ‘PC’ term “ethnicity” but this also suffers from social stereotyping.

ID is currently dependent on what people believe

Me 'n' Jorge Cham, creator of PhD comics!

Brooke showed one of her favourite PhD comics – comparing some common perceptions of science to the unfortunate reality! Time to drop in another me-and-someone-cool photo methinks…

privacy.com

Online, people actually tend to be truthful (despite the oft-excessive scaremongering regarding the interwebnet). People still seek trust and authenticity – just the same as irl (in real life, for those who may not know)!

Are our current problems and fears simply ‘growing pains’ like the printing press experienced – like every other technological development?

The web is the first multi-directional medium. We talk back.

I’ve made this point before, regarding Christina Odone’s indignation at people calling her out on her BS.

Personae for Sale

Where there are personal data, there’s business to be had. Tweets/facebook profiles and data for sale – advertising companies have a wealth of information available to them now.

Are we the summation of our entire history? Or do we take each moment as it comes? Is it possible to do that and still be sociable?

On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog!

Questions

Did anyone realise you were American? Revealing where you learn English

A/ I asked an English friend how to say things. People move; is where you are more important than where you were?

Do we know the maths on DNA ID?  We’ve gone from 16 reference points to 20 now. What’s the chance of a false positive match?

A/ No one’s bothere to check?

Audience: There are estimates! 1:several thousand (that’s really quite high!). Lots of confusion, probably no better than fingerprints.

Martin Robbins: Why come back to science?

A/ Between submitting my thesis and the viva, I needed cash! If I’d wanted to be a writer I’d have wanted to be  like Simon Singh.

What’s the usefulness of DNA fingerprints in court? How are lawyers defending it?

A/ I’m not a criminal lawyer! Statistical assumptions –> invalid model; they’re certifying people to appear as experts on ID in court.

Do you think we should give up? What’s the message?

A/ Confusion! Science, epidemiology, availability of records (histories) – People should think about it more.

Science isn’t necessarily about the results, it’s more about the process

[My boss (and all supervisors, in fact) certainly wouldn't agree with that!]

Evan Harris: Prosecutors often use fallacious stats

1/1,000,000,000 chance of a match does not equal 999,999:1 guilty odds

Fallibility impacts on the ethics of a database; even if the whole DNA sequence was there, epigenetics brings another level of complexity. [This is the modifications to the basic DNA code that also contain information and can affect our phenotypes - physical manifestations of genetic instructions.]

The example of imprinting disorders was given, specifically Prader-Willi and its maternal equivalent Angelman syndrome (which Brooke could not remember and asked the audience, but when I finally remembered and shouted it out, did not shout loud enough! Oh well. I haven’t forgotten *everything* from uni… it’s in there somewhere).

Brooke asked: how many have at some point fabricated their ID online? Barely any hands went up.

You can’t really stray from what you are

[Here I think of Big Brother and how long people can really keep up some act in front of the cameras before they're forced to forget it and start being themselves].

How big a problem is DNA contamination?

A/ It’s CSI fiction! I would like to think that people working on a case know what they’re doing (i.e. actually tying their hair up).

What do we have in common with our childhood selves??

A/ Good question; genetics vs. personality, nature/nurture etc. Can we quantify personality (religions, philosophy)?

Is Biometrics related to defense? Is it the fastest-growing industry?

A/ It’s well-funded. Pharma growing fast though. Popularity of crap TV contributes!

——–

Also in attendence were some high-profile ‘bad law’ victims:

- Paul Chambers, who was prosecuted for jokingly tweeting that he’d blow up the airport if it didn’t re-open (thus preventing him from visiting his girlfriend). His experience is now infamously known as the Twitter Bomb Hoax Trial.

- Harvey Singh, who has endured a two year libel case brought by a ‘Saint’, who has never even been to the UK.

- Dave Osler, who was sued for writing a blogpost.

You can listen to the full talk here on the PodDelusion! Brooke has also made the slides available here.

Cake or beer? I’ll have the cake, please.

Yesterday was the Science Blogging Talkfest event – photos from (the very sneaky photographer!) Rebecca Smith here, a couple of which I’ve now stolen (below). So, it was Talkfest and I’m talking in most of the pictures. Makes sense but looking quite ridiculous.

Basically some bloggers/readers of blogs/journalists/editors/Tweeters got together to have cake and tea/beer, discuss science blogging and the universe then drink the local pub dry.

A success, I reckon (even if the aims weren’t too clear, it’s sparked a lot of discussion).

So, after the sparkly cupcakes (which, as Ed Yong pointed out, were probably designed mainly to make everyone look equally ridiculous and break the ice) we sat down to have a Q&A with the panel about the purpose, merits and pitfalls of Science Blogging (and a bit about blogging in general).

The panel

In the hotseats were Alok Jha (Guardian science correspondent), Ed Yong (accomplished science writer), Mark Henderson (Times science editor), Jon Butterworth (CERN & UCL physicist), Petra Boynton (marvellous sex educator) and Andy Lewis (creator of the Quackometer). For Twitter users: @alokjha @edyong209 @markgfh @jonmbutterworth @drpetra & @lecanardnoir.

Before questions, there was a show-and-tell of people’s favourite blogs. These included:

Laelaps – a blog about excellent dead things (I used to want to be a paleontologist actually)

Genetic Future – making genetics issues accessible

Mind Hacks – on phsychology/behaviour and its relevance to everyday stuff & media stories

In the Dark – a sometimes-inspired, sometimes-written-after-dinner (not my words!) astronomy blog with personality.

Why Blog?

A question that family and friends often ask, I find.

JB: originally to explain things behind news stories (CERN and the LHC, for example) – but then it just kept going.

PB: because journalists get things wrong and leave out important information. We can bring evidence for people to use in life and get people thinking differently. Now I cover what gets requested.

MH: blogging enables you to reach quite specific audiences that clearly do exist but aren’t usually targeted by the mainstream media. Blogs often comment on stories as they unforld and add “DVD extras” (coined by Ed).

EY: to talk about science and show that it’s interesting. I love writing and explaining, making things easy to understand.

Actually it gives me a physical tingle. I think I’m addicted to it.

- Funny as it was when Ed said this, I think most people agree. It is nice when you manage to explain something that’s quite complicated in a way that elicits some kind of “ohhh, I seeee!” response from people (or indeed just a person).

A point to which most nodded was the fact that blogging enables you to avoid editors – although blogging does have a somewhat unique ability to be continually edited via comments and feedback. Alok stood up for editors later, saying that

A good editor can make your copy 100x better.

But a common Twitter-based reponse to this was along the lines of ‘well you’re f***** if you’ve got a bad one then’.

I re-started my blog, having had the original just-a-diary style one at university, because I missed having an outlet for sharing my views on things (usually that have irritated me) and I wanted to try my hand at communicating science. I mix personal entries with technical stuff because I’ve always presented myself as I am online and I don’t intend this site to be any different. I like socialising, getting to know people – I feel the best way to do that is to let people get to know me, too.

Measuring Impact

Ed told some brilliant stories he’d got from some of his readers simply by asking them why they read his blog and what they got out of it. This included a stay-at-home Dad who had little interest in science until stumbling across his site and others, who then acquired learning about science as a major hobby. Then there was the applause-earning anecdote from a previously fundamentalist christian who’d decided to become a scientist instead after being prompted to ‘think about how we learn things’.

PB: Can you really measure it?

As we discussed at the BSA SciComms conference, ‘impact’ is a difficult concept to define anyway. It’s often personal, rarely quantifiable and probably irrelevant a lot of the time.

I completely agree with Jon and others who said what really matters is your enjoyment. Many people start blogs just because they like writing and communicating with people, getting their opinions out, expressing themselves.

Alok, Ed, Alice Bell, Mark, Petra, Jon and Andy

Part of the reason I do it is that I like thinking about various issues (sometimes important, sometimes really not) and a lot of the time it seems people aren’t up for a serious discussion in person. This way, you can get down all your thoughts and it’s likely that someone out there on the web will want to engage with you. Message boards have always been good for this; chat rooms, even Facebook.

Don’t let anyone tell you blogging is trivial

Said Ed, following his impressive readers’ stories. Opinions can be changed, things can be achieved that perhaps otherwise would not have. Not everyone blogs in order to change the world, or even what a few people think, but if you are – go for it!

Anyone part of the libel reform campaign probably feels part of something effective; also 10:23, the Quacklash (which I shall hopefully write about shortly) and other achievements. Sure blogging isn’t the only effector but it’s definitely a force.

Unfortunately, as was conceded at the end of the event, not always for good.

The internet is (for the most part) a free space where anyone can say what they want. That, of course, means that people we’d rather not hear from, whose influence will never be positive, can do their share of misinforming and opinion-shifting.

‘Climategate’ is a shining example.

Tweeting to Distraction

So the Twitterfall was back with a vengeance at the event; people’s thoughts (including some of the panel’s) were displayed on the walls – we don’t usually see what goes on inside people’s minds but in this case we get some insight.

The list of tweets is available here.

It’s a bit surreal, often funny (found myself sniggering a lot, apologies to the person sitting next to me) but is it really a good thing?

I think (and I know I’m not the only one) that many people were quite distracted by it, to the point where maybe discussions were diminished because people were too busy tapping away and reading the feed. Did we really get anything extra from it? I’m not sure.

Hilarious, when an outbreak of coughing erupted, caused by Stephen Curry’s

Cough if you think Dr Evan Harris needs to be in the Geek calendar

But the problem is, now I can’t remember what was being said when this happened!

I think Twitterfalls are great for intervals and such, good for working out who you know from the Twittersphere and whose hand you’d like to shake, but not sure it’s a good idea during such an event. Any thoughts?

I’ll add the link to the official recording (if it worked!), photos etc. when it’s available.

Edit: Also covered by

@ShaneMcC questions the lack of purpose and Jon Butterworth himself gives more in-depth analysis.

Stephen Curry tackles the wider issue of (perceived?) ‘bland’ scientific prose.

Alice in Galaxyland – giving some tips for those further afield and busy with work (for the record, give me a shout if you need a sofa, fellow skeptics!)

Paula Salgado

Vivienne at Outdoor Science

In the Dark, having picked up on being mentioned as a favourite site!

Guns don’t kill people, Rabbids do

I wrote this back in 2008 but feel the need to post it, following this preposterous attempt to show how bad games are for kids. Methinks the problem here is having gun-toting redneck parents.

Edit 22/03/10 – OK this is what I’m talking about. Do not watch if you have high blood pressure.

Is gaming bad for children?

There is considerable opposition to the games industry but I know that there are plenty of healthy people out there (myself included) who enjoy video games a lot. People like to say “games are bad for children” and that “there are negative psychological effects” like implanting desires to go and shoot real people or steal cars. “They should be outside playing instead, not sat indoors!”

What games did (and do) for me

I have been using computer games since the age of 3-5, largely because my older brother bought and kindly let me use the latest gadgets (Commodore 64, Atari, Amiga 500). I also played in the woods, ate at the table and read books. Rather than playing things that mainly involved death and destruction, they tended to be educational games for learning maths, French etc. – brightly coloured with plinky-plonky music (they all had plinky-plonky music then!).

Dull-coloured games supposed to be more realistic just didn’t appeal to me (e.g. Shadow of the Beast on Amiga).  Similarly, children prefer to look at toys in shops over the home furnishings. I learned a lot from games; Pythagoras’ theorem from an Earthworm Jim cartoon, Japanese geography from Mystical Ninja (N64), Roman/Greek Gods from Populous and hilarious insults from Monkey Island (You fight like a dairy farmer! Well, you fight like a cow!). I drew my favourite characters & play songs on my keyboard. More exciting than school art/music!

In my second quinquennium I got into Street Fighter, Star Wing, racing titles and Deity-games like Populus. These had some violence and while I desperately wanted spikey wrist bracelets like Chun-Li for a while, I didn’t feel the need to act things out (that’s not a dig at you, cosplayers). How do you reconstruct shooting polygonal alien space ships/beating up electric green monsters anyway? My sense of reality was not blurred by gaming experiences. It’s obvious that the two are separate.

Perceived problems of gaming

Perhaps this is where today’s opposition comes from; games are more realistic. However, I (and others) find that this means graphics are a boring brown-green-grey mixture that is thoroughly uninspiring, I would have thought, to children.

Games like Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto get the Aunties and Uncles crying that we are filling our children’s minds with the desire to maim and kill. Do they take their little nieces and nephews to 18-certificate films containing sex, foul language and death? I doubt it, well I hope not – so why are parents letting them play 18-rated games?

I have no time for people who buy GTA for their 11-year-olds and are then shocked by killing prostitutes to reclaim money, outrunning police cars & aiding hardened criminals in various illegal activities for fun. No, I don’t personally like GTA but I know a lot of people who do. They are, importantly, well over 18 & can easily separate the virtual world from reality. Just as we have the watershed to protect children from unsavoury television, we have the certification of games. It is the fault of people who fail to pay attention to these if their child’s attitudes become warped, not the gaming industry itself. I don’t think any sensible person would call for the end of swearing, sex and violence in all films so I don’t see why it is reasonable to call for all disturbing video games to be banned. Just don’t go and buy them for your kids.

Literature, too. Anyone who’s read Stephen King must have at some point wondered what’s wrong with him – where does all that disturbing stuff come from?? I don’t recall anyone burning all his books, though. If you’re an adult you can choose what you want to do; go and see a violent film, read a freaky book, play a crime game.

Another common complaint is that gaming is anti-social. Really? I used to have friends come over for multiplayer, binging games I didn’t have. I didn’t play all day long – if your child is playing too much, stop them! Have a time limit, have the computer and TV where you can see it and take some responsibility.

The current gaming landscape

Now we have the world of online gaming. You can challenge/team up with people from miles away. Whether console-based or, for the more serious gamer, on PCs, this is surely a form of social interaction. I know that after being bullied throughout primary school, having the internet from the age of 12 (where my parents could see it, I hasten to add), really helped me. I could go to small chat rooms & talk to people without being in the same room, even people on the other side of the world! It was fascinating and it rekindled my interest in people and socialising.

Gaming communities within epic landscapes such as World of Warcraft allow some otherwise shy & secluded characters to re-make themselves into something they’re confident to show to others. Whether this translates to the real world or not, surely some interaction with others is better than none? Online capability is increasingly important in new releases, with the fun of playing death-matches with your friends in the same room extended to people you may not have met face-to-face… yet!

More recently, the Wii has brought us ‘active gaming’. We flail around, pull some muscles (Wii Sports baseball) and get a bit sweaty (boxing!). Maybe this will lead to more people of all ages going out and trying a new sport or just being a little bit more active than usual. We can easily move away from couch-potato-land if we embrace these innovations. No, it’s not actually tennis/bowling/skiing – so what? It’s more than watching someone do it on TV; it’s funny (laughing is healthy too) and sociable. Most people I know who play games also do some real sport and have other hobbies besides.

Nintendo hoped to change people’s gaming attitudes and the typical gaming audience. Now from the youngest to the oldest, male and female, people don’t feel alienated from the fantastic experience that is the video games world. I know it has enriched my life and friendships and sparked my imagination many times. While other consoles may be pushing for ever increasingly realistic graphics with more and more brown-green-grey, hordes of FP shooters, racing clones etc., Nintendo still leads the way in producing original, innovative titles, even if a lot of them recycle characters (with varying success).

Thank you, Ninty, for keeping my inner child alive.

Left: Deku Link; right: Link with Goron mask (Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask; inspired by Wil Overton‘s original images )

Edit: Just found this talk, how gaming can save the world! Good stuff.

Addendum Re: today’s (10 March 2010) news story; how exactly do they know that the reason the toddler grabbed the gun was because she thought it was a wii gun (which are white and blue plastic)? Toddlers grab stuff, it’s what they do. If you leave a loaded handgun on the table, your parenting shortfalls are far more extensive than playing too many games, or indeed letting your children near games. Picking up a controller doesn’t kill you – shooting yourself in the stomach most certainly does. They are clearly not the same thing.

“It looks so real. I mean, when you take that and you can look at my glock, there are real similarities,” said Wilson County Det. Jeff Johnson. – er, well, kitchen knives look an awful lot like… knives… but if your kid stabs themselves with one you left on the floor, the problem isn’t with the fact that knives exist is it! Christ.