Just watched a great clip over on FreshCreation.com of Steven Johnson the Author of ‘Everything bad is Good for you’. Johnson is asking us to consider if games had been invented 500 years ago and that books had only just been invented and were gaining popularity amongst young people. He argues that books would come under the same amount of criticism that is currently facing the computer game. One point to take from this idea is that society tends to a have bias towards the traditional and show fear towards the new. Consider the invention of the printing press, people feared that it would reduce the quality of the written word as it allowed access to many more people, or the calculator which was feared to stop the youth building their numerical skills, and now the Internet with is apperently stopping us from thinking for ourselves and turing our brains to mush. Things that force people to think and act differently will always be met with fear and negativity, but it’s often the things that make us think and act differently which have the power to really change things, and more often than not change them for the better. It’s important to approach everything from every possible perspective and make sure we don’t let the fear of what is new get in the way of progress.
