Sunday, February 16, 2014

news flash: you are not really wasting all that time playing games

First google made us stupid.
Facebook made us lonelier than ever.
Is there any good news out there ?  Yes !   Mourn not, Flappybirds will be followed by ...

NYT reports research on leveraging addictive nature of some of those games to build better minds.
Yep,  from the article:
"
First it was Doodle Jump. Then Dots. And now — will it never end? — Flappy Bird.
So many of the games that we download on our smartphones are a waste of time, but we can’t seem to stop playing them. My current high score on the late, lamented Flappy Bird is three. After weeks of tap-tap-taping to keep that stupid little bird flying. Three.
Why do we keep falling for these things?
The answer to that question just might be found in, of all places, a medical laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco. Researchers there are trying to figure out what makes games addictive — and how we might use video games to make our minds stronger, faster and healthier.
"