The Younger generation

[Dogbert]

Forget the young generation, Alice stopped reading since she started playing morrowind.
Why ? It's simple, games stimulate you much more.

While books stimulate your imagination, a movie gives you visual and aural stimulation. Games go a step further by giving you an active role in the story.
While a book gives quite little information (I mean, how fast can you read ?) and needs quite a lot of brain processing (scenery, characters, voices, feelings etc. etc. etc.) a movie / game gives you tons of information and requires very little processing on your part.
The inevitable happes, technology makes us lazy.

Imagine what'll happen when games / movies would give you full stimulation (picture, sound, smell, touch) ? Who'll want to sit down with a book and imagine a scene which takes 3 minutes to read what technology can give you in less than 3 seconds ?

I really hope I'll be able to convince my children to read. Seems like it's going to be nearly impossible.

[DGhost]

has anyone ever looked at what all this stimulation is doing to young kids?

i firmly believe that from a developmental psychology aspect it is very harmful for young kids to have the toys with all the lights and the sounds and all the activity. i mean, damn, we are practically forcing them to have things such as ADD/ADHD because they grow up with such constant overstimulation.

my roommate last year *required* the TV to be on in order for him to fall asleep. he couldn't do it otherwise. he also pretty much required the TV and his music playing at the same time to do simple things such as study.

my roommate this year is similar, altho not as bad... he pretty much requires his music on all the time in order to do anything... doesn't need it to fall asleep tho...

to build on what dogbert said, i believe that this lack of having to process information and slowly read also has led to the short attention span of the youth today...

[The PIT]

I'm trying to think of a game that gives me tons of information. Errm nope most of the so called plots wouldn't fill half a side of paper. Got to admit haven't played Morrowind. Suppose some War games may give you some brief tatical planning.

[GNEP]

Playing the original civilisation was my only experience of a real game that had any sort of educational effect - it filled in some holes in my knowledge of ancient history. Can't think of a single other one.

And the whole fun of reading is that you do use your imagination - and can create a world in your head. How many times have you thought that a film of a book was better than the book? Not nearly as many as the other way round I'd bet...

[The PIT]

Originally posted by GNEP
And the whole fun of reading is that you do use your imagination - and can create a world in your head. How many times have you thought that a film of a book was better than the book? Not nearly as many as the other way round I'd bet...

Normally I find the book better than film characters tend to change and act in different ways.

[KRSESQ]

Heard a report not too long ago that the producers of the Harry Potter movies were having second thoughts. Fans were complaining that the visuals of the movies could not compare to the imagery their imaginations had produced. But once seeing the movie, in subsequent readings of the book the movie visualizations crowded out the imagery of their imaginations.

The result was a net loss for the impact of the story.

Kevin