USS Hyperbole

admin — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:17:59 +0000

No postings because I just got back from a week in France. The trip was meant to be a romantic one so I managed to tear myself away form the Internet for the time being. I still kept up with events with events, checking out the paper in the morning and what not, but for the most part I dropped off the infogrid. What I didn’t realize I had missed until I got back to the States was the amount of hyperbole in the media here. News in Europe is really just that: news. They report the events and let you know what’s happening in the world. There is very little opinion and very little slant. But more importantly, there is a lack of hyperbole — a lack of the biggest, most world-devastating, evil, gianormous kind of talk. Obviously the US media has its causes for being the way it is (money) and that has been discussed by media pundits aat great length, but what’s not often discussed is how our news sources distort the truth not through slant but through ridiculous exaggeration. Our media presents us with information through a giant fish eye lense and every event is world-shattering and massive. This effect is worsened by a news cycle that only seems to be capable of presenting us with three or four stories, void of important detail. Every story becomes bigger than it is. Every danger looms larger. Every story gives greater reason to fear that the world is coming apart at the seams.

Video Games for Children Everywhere

admin — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 14:33:15 +0000

As usual today it wasn’t so much one article in particular that caught my eye but rather the overlap that existed between several. MIT has gotten serious about building a $100 laptop for kids. But kids don’t want laptops, they want video game machines — especially portable ones. MIT’s whole point is that the computer is the perfect tool to “learn how to learn”. With thousands of texts online, information and all kinds of multimedia, it just seems obvious that getting cheap laptops to poorer children all over the world would be a fantastic way to create innovation and give a greater education to those less fortunate. I don’t disagree with this goal. Hardly. I think it’s an imperative. Giving children of Third World countries technology will least begin to close the gap between economies the world over and improve life for everyone.

I just think MIT has its form-factor wrong. The PSP is a great example of a computer that is lightweight, portable, rechargeable, rugged and maybe most importantly of all: engaging. It’s not just a video game machine either. With wifi and a web connection, virtually anyone, anywhere can engage. In fact, I think the PSP has another going for it besides having a better form-factor and being a serious computing platform: you don’t have to know how to read to use it. I’ve played more than my share of games in Japanese though I don’t read a word of it. You can still figure it out. Video games, for all their entertainment value, are still at the height of the usability curve.

It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine the kinds of educational video games that are possible for such a device. There aren’t a lot for the PSP just yet and frankly I think we’ve only begun to take the idea of the educational game to the level it could be taken.

Oh yeah. The PSP is $250. Sell them in bulk units of 1 million (as MIT plans to do with their laptop) with pre-loaded educational tools to governments and educational organizations and you could easily reach the $100 mark. I say give the kids what they want. Give them portable game machines!

P.S. If your only protest is “There’s no keyboard!” then I should like to point out that teenage girls in Europe are quite capable of typing on their cell phones. Kids learn quick.

Banapana » Europe

USS Hyperbole

Video Games for Children Everywhere