On more than one occasion, I’ve had friends allude to my driving style in terms reserved for New York City cab drivers. While I am flattered to be grouped with those seemingly death-defying, daredevil, speed-demon drivers, I have nowhere near their level of expertise. (“Seemingly” is the operative word here, as I understand that the City’s emergency rooms see quite a number of victims of cab-related incidents.) However, one thing that is true is that my reflexes and alertness have served me well on more than one occasion while driving. Perhaps that’s merely luck. It’s important to be aware of surroundings when driving—and that’s a skill honed by playing video games. Perhaps some of my driving skills come from “sitting” behind the wheel of “Spy Hunter.”
The Flynn effect (or Lynn-Flynn effect) is the phenomenon in which the IQ scores of a population gradually increase over time. There are numerous theories—not necessarily mutually exclusive—which try to explain this trend. One theory points to the continuing increase in environmental stimulations, including video games: each subsequent generation is challenged with problem solving in daily interactions with appliances, devices, entertainment, and countless other user interfaces, improving its IQ. Our parents’ generation is trying to learn a completely new way of interfacing with its (digital) environment. For them to do so requires that they modify a lifetime of understanding the parameters of a non-digital world. Our children are growing up in a world where something like a computer mouse is the natural extension of an appendage. My generation’s loss is that after years of working toward mastery, the eight- (or four-) directional joystick never took off as a universal controller (thank goodness; the iPod would not look right with a big, lewd, red-knobbed joystick sticking out of its face).
I, for one, am looking forward to the day when my doctor prescribes one hour of Nintendo “Wii” per day. And I can pick it up at the drugstore for only $20—prescription insurance co-payment.
Illustration by Retsu Takahashi
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