For 15 years, I've heard jeremiads about videogames and how they're making kids into malignant, illiterate little zombies who massacre people en masse after playing too much Mortal Kombat.
What a crock.
I am one of those videogame babies. I was born the same year as Pong. And I think videogames have been perfect training for life in fin-de-millénaire America. Just navigating through an urban landscape, I have to confront a world of lurid graphics, blaring music, and rampant violence. Frogger was the perfect trial run.
In a videogame world, everything happens at once and has to be dealt with in real time. This is what cognitive psychologists call parallel processing. What a shame, say critics, that videogames pump up kids' parallel processing abilities at the expense of contemplation and linear, serial thought.
It used to be a serial world, I guess. But it's not anymore. I need to think like a Donkey Kong jockey. Yes, videogames have fundamentally shaped my brain. Thank god.
- J. C. Herz (mischief@phantom.com) is the author of Surfing on the Internet.
