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Except the argument doesn't hold water. There is a difference between playing with toy blocks or virtual blocks. The toy blocks develop physical skills, and tea

by maaku 11y ago

Except the argument doesn't hold water. There is a difference between playing with toy blocks or virtual blocks. The toy blocks develop physical skills, and teaches physical experimentation. The virtual blocks develops keyboard/gamepad skills and usually illustrates unphysical simulation. The toy blocks allow arbitrary social interaction with other kids, the virtual blocks constrain social interaction to the limits of the device or setting. I've been in that camp -- I got a degree from DigiPen before I decided to do something more meaningful with my life. But I wish I could go back in time and tell the adolescent me that obsessed over games, hosted LAN parties, and spent all his waking hours in front of his custom-built PC, to just go outside and play.

derefr 11y ago
> But I wish I could go back in time and tell the adolescent me that obsessed over games, hosted LAN parties, and spent all his waking hours in front of his custom-built PC, to just go outside and play That sounds like you were in the opposite of that camp, actually. If you embraced the idea of medium irrelevancy as a child, then you would default to ambivalence between, say, playing a sports game, and playing an actual sport. This would let you freely weigh the pros and cons of each, which would likely end up with you playing the actual sport. The medium may be irrelevant, but the individual activities are not identical, they're just in an equivalence class with one-another. Playing with wood blocks can be better or worse than playing with abstract-vertex blocks, exactly insofar as either of those can be better or worse than playing with jello blocks, or imaginary blocks, or building something out of real fired-clay bricks. What I'm getting at, is that activities done on a computer are not in a separate magisterium where their "computerness" is their one and only property. Ignore that they're on a computer; look at them for what they actually are, what they actually require and enable you to do, etc. Soccer is better as a real physical activity on a field. Scrabble (as my grandmother continually attests) is better as an asynchronous online mobile game. The reasons why have nothing to do with the "computerness", and everything to do with the required affordances and social goals of the two activities. I should also note that frequently there isn't an either-or distinction. I "hang out with my friends" strictly more than I used to, because I do the same amount of real-world "hanging out", and a bunch of additional low-engagement online "hanging out." This is especially true of the friends I have in other countries; 20 years ago, my relationship with them would be something like "I write them letters and see them once every three years." Now we talk all night.
- maaku 11y ago
  Past tense.

by maaku 11y ago

derefr 11y ago

> But I wish I could go back in time and tell the adolescent me that obsessed over games, hosted LAN parties, and spent all his waking hours in front of his custom-built PC, to just go outside and play That sounds like you were in the opposite of that camp, actually. If you embraced the idea of medium irrelevancy as a child, then you would default to ambivalence between, say, playing a sports game, and playing an actual sport. This would let you freely weigh the pros and cons of each, which would likely end up with you playing the actual sport. The medium may be irrelevant, but the individual activities are not identical, they're just in an equivalence class with one-another. Playing with wood blocks can be better or worse than playing with abstract-vertex blocks, exactly insofar as either of those can be better or worse than playing with jello blocks, or imaginary blocks, or building something out of real fired-clay bricks. What I'm getting at, is that activities done on a computer are not in a separate magisterium where their "computerness" is their one and only property. Ignore that they're on a computer; look at them for what they actually are, what they actually require and enable you to do, etc. Soccer is better as a real physical activity on a field. Scrabble (as my grandmother continually attests) is better as an asynchronous online mobile game. The reasons why have nothing to do with the "computerness", and everything to do with the required affordances and social goals of the two activities. I should also note that frequently there isn't an either-or distinction. I "hang out with my friends" strictly more than I used to, because I do the same amount of real-world "hanging out", and a bunch of additional low-engagement online "hanging out." This is especially true of the friends I have in other countries; 20 years ago, my relationship with them would be something like "I write them letters and see them once every three years." Now we talk all night.

maaku 11y ago
Past tense.