Fahmida Y. Rashid, reporting for Forbes.com, says The Wired Are A Rude Bunch.

While technology, such as cell phones, e-mail and instant messaging, have in many ways made life easier, these same devices may make users lazy and oblivious to their surroundings.

A study cited in Rashid’s article claimed that 52% surveyed said they would “die” if their phones and e-mails were taken away.

That reminds me… PC-Turnoff Week is only 3 days away!

Posted: July 28th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
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That deaf, dumb and blind kid sure played a mean pinball.

But this blind guy’s got him beat.

[updated the link - Jul 28]

Posted: July 28th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 1

Technology can make our lives safer, but it also might be making our lives scarier.

I feel that certain techonologies give us too much information. Do I really want to monitor where my teen is driving and get instant alerts when these devices sense that went too fast, or have gone “out of range”? One parent explains:

“Parents are scared to death,” said Selditz, father of a teenage driver. “There are so many parents who want something like this to give them a little piece of mind.”

Why should parents be scared to death?

Big Mother is watching (Salon) talks about a wide variety of technologies to track your kids and explores what’s going on.

From pajamas with RFID tags built in, to teddy bears that spy on your kids, there are plenty of products to sell to paranoid parents.

One parent is quoted as saying:

“Whether we like it or not,” says David Gomillion, the young Florida parent, “these products are a necessary fact of the kind of world we live in.

But that’s not true at all. Reality doesn’t support that commonly held belief that the world is a more dangerous place. The fear and anxiety is being manufactured in the marketing departments of the companies that sell these products and in the 24-hour news rooms.

The irony is that, although news reports paint a bleak picture, independent statistics show that life has become less dangerous for kids in recent years — with violent crime in particular dropping by 38 percent since 1975. The short spin cycle of cable TV may anoint a new child victim every week, but the actual numbers are far less grim: of the 800,000 kids that go missing each year in America, only 150 cases involve what the Justice Department calls “stereotypical kidnappings,” in which a child is taken by a stranger and either held for ransom, abused or killed. Scores more “missing children” are teenage runaways or “throwaways,” abandoned by their parents. “Truly, the real news story of the last 10 years has been the astonishing decline in crime,” says Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, a New York City child psychologist. “But we are assaulted by a media that is more interested in scaring people, so it is almost impossible for parents to assess the real level of risk. And of course, there is no shortage of people willing to sell products based on those fears.”

Posted: July 27th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
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While part of the video game business hits rock bottom with games like 25 to Life and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas with it’s pornographic “Hot Coffee” mods, there are other notable things going on in the same industry: Video Game Biz Converting to Christianity.

…a small but growing number of game developers are creating titles for Christian gamers

That emerging market segment will be in focus at the fourth annual Christian Game Developers Conference (July 28-30, Portland, Ore.), which hands out awards for the best Christian games of the year and looks to “equip game developers to glorify God.”

I’m not sure what that means exactly, but will I want my kids to play these games?

Go Play Research video game analyst Billy Pidgeon said “socially conservative Christians may not want their children to play games at all…On the other hand, when kids are asking to play video games, Christian parents may find these games an acceptable way to promote their values, while keeping their children entertained.”

OK. But still moderation is key with these video games. Kids can find all sorts of creative ways to keep themselves entertained without video games too.

“The challenge for Christian game developers has always been delivering a quality game experience,” Bagley said. “The last thing we want to do is preach to people.”

See also: Christian Game Developers Foundation

Posted: July 25th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
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I’ve saved up handfuls of links to talk about, and have been running out of time. Let me just dump them for you. Here is a little cluster of links to stories about the pros and cons of television:

• Too Much TV May Hurt Kids’ Learning
• TV viewing good and bad for kids, Seattle study says
• TV watching link to child obesity

Posted: July 22nd, 2005 under Uncategorized.
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Question Technology refers to a web site that will read bedtime stories to your kids so that you don’t have to.

I can’t be bothered to recant it to you. I’m too tired. Let him tell you the story in his post: Read it Again, Hal!

:-)

Posted: July 22nd, 2005 under Uncategorized.
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How the Web changes your reading habits, from the Christian Science Monitor.

Computers and the Internet are changing the way people read. Thus far, search engines and hyperlinks, those underlined words or phrases that when clicked take you to a new Web page, have turned the online literary voyage into a kind of U-pick island-hop.

We’ve got a long way to go before books can be replaced by an online equivalent, IMHO. Books are portable, perfect for the beach or the waiting room at the dentist, or the flight. They’re not limited to 96dpi…

Do people really find the book obsolete?

Posted: July 20th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 2

Last month, Yahoo closed chat rooms which facilitated child predators, pornographers, and other seedy activity. The move appears to be in response to a lawsuit.

“The specific reason for the closure not withstanding, this is a positive a step in the online fight against child exploitation,” said Michelle Collins, director of the exploited children unit at The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, based in Alexandria, Va.

Posted: July 20th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 2

Covered in The New Scientist News is a story about Klaus Mathiak at the University of Aachen in Germany, who conducted an interesting study.

Thirteen men had their brain’s scanned by MRI, while they played video games. During violent periods in the game, there were definite shifts in the parts of the brain that were “lit up” vs the non-violent periods of play.

These findings matched findings when subjects were exposed to simulated violence or imagining aggressive encounters.

Since it’s we can’t monitor the brain in real live violent encounters it’s difficult to say that the brain sees video games violence as real violence, but it would seem that way, to some extent. I don’t think that this study links video game violence to players later committing real world violence either, but it would appear that video games might be a reasonable way of training the mind to deal with real-world situations. (Although you’d better back up that some physical training as well.)

Hat-tip to Question Technology

Posted: July 20th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
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Here is a new word I learned today:

Cyberchondriacs

You can definately scare the pants off of yourself by going onto the Internet for medical information.

Posted: July 19th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
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