Is my brain, game?

I have to admit, it may be due to my innate personality, but I can never stick to a game for more than a month. Even with mobile games like bejeweled or even simpler ones like cooking mama. I’m not trying to brag (well, maybe I am) but I finish the levels of the games really fast and get easily bored with what is being offered.

However, you might say there’s more to games than bejeweled and cooking mama. The vast variety of RPG games around us boasts of features that claim to train us in leadership skills, mathematical and scientific ingenuity, even social skills. I find it hard to believe that one who is an avid gamer could excel in a social environment away from the computer screen.

I’m driving at the article published in The Wired magazine explaining how games can teach valuable skills. I have my reservations for this article, heavy ones, for the fact that I’ve been in both human resource and education lines before. It may be possible that building an empire online may impart some leadership skills in the gamer. However, there are studies that prove that long periods of gaming can lead to depleting attention span. This is definitely not a beneficial skill both in school and at work. Not to forget that most games have violent scenes and continual exposure to these scenes can affect the prefrontal cortex of our brain, turning the gamer to be a moody or even aggressive person.

But of course, as with chocolates, if in moderation, the effects are not drastic. I conclude that the article published was just feeding the wishful thoughts of the average gamer hoping that one day the chair he or she is sitting on will turn into gold.

Maybe the following infograph can give a more balanced argument on whether gaming is good or bad for us.

Credits: http://bit.ly/AkBAsm

MobileMe

Remember MobileMe, now replaced with iCloud? Then there’s myspace, iPhone, iGoogle. The words I and Me are used everyday in the names of brands and applications that we fail to realize how individualistic everything has been. Everything in this age is personalized. Individuals want to have more control of their lives and their choices. Evidently, Steve Jobs understood this.

We all know that the television used to be a family affair – from the point of purchase to the after dinner shows that families gather to watch together. Such is no longer the case in the age of the millenials. Firstly, TVs are so accessible that a majority of households in Singapore have more that one set at home. Even I have 3 sets at home, one for each of us in the house.

With mobile media, such as iPhone, the I in this device is heavily emphasized. When using your iPhone, you’re plugged in to your personal zone where you shut away from the external environment and start scrolling down tweets as you listen to Lana Del Ray. It starts with the outlook of the phone too. The iPhone comes in either black or white. Why do we have to decide between the two when the functions are the same? Why do we have to bedazzle them with Swarovski crystals or attach bunny ears to it? The user needs to be in control of the device and then when using this device, forms a bubble around themselves creating a private world between themselves and the device.

Just think about it, when listening to a favourite song and walking down the street, didn’t you ever feel like one of the angels on the Victoria Secrets catwalk? By plugging in to our media, we cancel off the world around us and think that we’re in our own fantasy world. Not only that, your personal media becomes the device to avoid confrontations. Neighbors don’t have long chats with each other anymore. We are more eager to look down at our smartphones than to continue a conversation.

It is ironic that we learn about the happenings of the world without even looking up.

We are all connected.

We are all connected.

44% of us in Singapore, foreigners or citizens, are constantly connected to our 3G enabled phones. That would mean almost half the country is logged on to an Android or IPhone. This is definitely evident as soon as you step in to a public transport like the trains. Just across from you, you see heads bowed down, thumbs twiddling over their devices. Be it, smartphone, mp3 player or a PSP, Singaporeans are constantly connected to their mobile devices.

It is innate in our culture to have our minds, hands or even feet occupied every waking minute we have. Walking around this city-state, it is hard to find anyone that is idling their time away. Hard to even find anyone sitting at Starbucks, facing the crowd and enjoying the sight of the people that pass by – it is also rude to look at strangers. With mobile internet in our hands, the applications available feed our desire to keep up with the pace of our society. Not only do we download these applications thinking that we have any use for them at that moment, but we also download them thinking that we have some use for them in the future and of course to not be left out.

We complain about stress and having surrounded by so much information. However, we forget that we are all sucked into this vortex of data that resides in our pockets and will never seem to leave. Our brains need to take a power nap or even a long honeymoon sometimes. With our constant crave for something new and fast, we might just stumble upon an application that teaches us to be idle.

Statistics Source: http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats

Just Google It!

Google, just like Facebook, Whatsapp and Skype are not only known as applications but also have become a verb in the global lingo. It is uncommon for us to hear our friends saying “Let’s Google that!” or “I’ll Whatsapp you the picture!”

For us who have been immersed in the search technology might find it hard to recall what search engine we used before Google came about. Even Yahoo is off radar by the fact that no one (at least not me since I don’t want to be mistaken as exclaiming in the middle of a sentence) would use Yahoo as a verb to search for information.

Google has evolved from letting us search for information to suggest to us what we could be searching for. This may be a convenience to some but to me it can be a bane occasionally. I get easily distracted by the other search suggestions and venture on to other topics before going back to what I was looking for. This is not just a Google problem though. It is a #firstworldproblem, being surrounded by so much information.

As we may know, Google search suggestions are ranked by the number of times the global users searched a certain phrase or word. This emphasizes the fact that users are the ones feeding information to the search engine by creating trends. A perfect experiment done by popular Youtuber, Kevjumba shows how users can use this system to push up a rank of a search topic.

This is Kevin asking his fans to key in the words in the search bar.

This is Kevin showing us the result.

With over 2,000,000 subscribers on his Youtube channel, Kevin had that power to “command” his fans to search for that sentence. Within 3 months, you can see the result.

Therein lies the dilemma on how effective the search engine can be. Sites may have manipulated their metatags with keywords that are deemed to be trending in cyberspace. Can we truly trust the rankings that Google put up for us when we know that ‘experiments’ such as one done by Kevin exists?

Maybe revisiting the Dewey Decimal System should be on our checklist.

Original links to the full video: http://youtu.be/kOvMLF650k0, http://youtu.be/WgV89H4jevI

Will you Pin that?

Here’s the thing about social media users, or maybe just us humans generally.  We use social media as our diaries, our photo albums, our notebooks and even our greeting cards. These ‘agents’ or applications that we use everyday, collect our data sometimes without us knowing and then use this data for other commercial means.

At the thought of this some of us panicked but instead of thinking about how we are now relying so much on these applications, started to put up pictures of Google founders with devil horns, calling them evil. However, when another application pops up and catches on, we start to feed in more data about ourselves to this application.

Case in point, Pinterest.

How do you even pronounce it by the way? Is it pee-interest or pin-terest?

As we figure out how it is supposed to sound, Pinterest is a combination of tumblr, Facebook, Google and Twitter disguised as your scrapbook.

Users can download the ‘Pin It’ button to their web browser and this button will let you grab any image you like and add it to one of your ‘pinboards’ in Pinterest. Other users can then comment or ‘repin’ these images on their own pinboards.

When users use the ‘Pin It’ button, the source comes with the image thus making it possible for users to go back to the source website to look for more. This is a great advantage for brands with quality images.

Even with the premature panic of data robbery by Internet giants, Pinterest as put by TechCrunch, had a ‘blow-dryer’ growth. Pinterest garnered more than 10 million hits in a month in U.S. alone.

So, relax, why panic? We’re going to give them what they want anyways..

Web 2.0 = Brain 2.0?

The basis of Web 2.0 was developed by user-generated content. That would mean that our brains had revolutionized into 2.0 as well.

Can we take this step further and let the Web spin more ideas for us even as we sleep?

Of course we can!

Take for example, the Yumemiru, an IPhone application that claims to be able to control your dreams. The movie Inception came to mind, and I daydreamed about doing stunts just like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, twirling about in the office corridor.

If not for the Japanese neighbours in the building, I will have no clue what the application helps me with. Probably the developers could work on an English version.

Interestingly, Yumemiru uses the microphone in our IPhones to detect when the user starts dreaming. Once that is detected, a soundtrack will be played to stimulate you to dreaming what you’ve selected among the 8 scenarios available in the application. One of the scenarios includes getting rich or even a fairy tale love story catered to either men or women.

Earlier I mentioned about revolutionizing our brains. In the world of Web 2.0, where everything is about sharing and linking, The Yumemiru definitely did not leave out that aspect. Users are encouraged to share their dreams via Facebook or Twitter.

With thousands of users sharing what they dreamed about last night, there is no boundary to how many innovative ideas one can sculpt from the dreams shared.

This application could be the start of revolutionizing creative and innovative thinking in the education system, who knows?

Addicted to Roam

Every quarter, depending on the sticky embrace of procrastination, I spring-clean both the hard drives of my Mac and PC. The same goes to my lobes in my brain – in desperate need of a reboot session.

The only way to reboot is a short trip out of this tiny island set in the sea. This time round, the destination – Chennai, India.

On the plane, the announcement was made to switch off all electronic devices. I thought to myself, “This is the moment where I will leave technology behind and join the South Indians in the land of analog!”. However, I realized that I was on a budget airline and there was no such thing as inflight entertainment. Instead of switching off, my phone was left on airplane mode.

Once in Chennai, I had to Google the address to our hotel. Data roaming was switched on without thinking about the beckoning bill. The journey to the hotel was an exhilarating drive! My thoughts were running through in 140 characters and Instagram filters. I could not resist but post a picture, or maybe 2, up on Instagram. Then my phone beeped…

I had a momentary anxiety attack realizing that I would not be able to Whatsapp and upload dreamy pictures! I needed my data roam more than I needed cream for the blister on my heel! After a chat with SingTel, I got my 3G back.

Hi. My name is Noraini and I’m addicted to my 3G.

So much for a reboot.