Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Tech?

Aside from the obvious terror of the internet (or someone's basement RAID array) becoming conscious and, therefore, potentially Skynet or a sad accident between a IEEE 1394 interface and a corpse populating the world with zombies (and, by proximity, the internet, creating ZombieSkynet), what reason is there to be afeared of technology?

For some, it's called Wii. Wii Fit, that is.


Yeah, that's the Japanese version, just for kicks

Granted, the Wii instills fear in many people for many reasons. Hardcore gamers tremble at the thought of friends and families gathering in the living room to laugh and exercise with an intriguing but admittedly imprecise user interface.

While there are arguments for Resident Evil 4 and Metroid Prime 3, the Wii Fit is an argument against why computers should gain the ability of sentience (like this lovely comic).

Wii Fit made me fat. It's true. I never thought too much of the mild bulge around my mid-section, but when I stepped on the Wii Fit, I found I was barely Overweight and flinching to Obese. And I'm a reasonably-fit, albeit heavier-than-i'd-like person.

And then I tossed it off, said I was too good for Wii Fit. But there it was, under the coffee table, begging me to do the age thing again, begging me to be weighed. And after a month or so, I did it again. And, by a twitch, I hit Obese.

DAMN YOU, WII! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

No. Stop. It's not the Wii's fault. It's me. I knew. I've known for a while. But I ignored it. And I ignored it. And then I couldn't. Who wants to be fatty-boom-ba-latty? Who wants a computer to tell you you're Obese?

Not me.

C'mon Wii Fit. Bring it. I'll take breaks for Wii Sports boxing. But only that. Then back to the balance board. Stretch. Bounce. Games. Yoga.

Even if you're sporting a T-800 memory chip under there, it only serves to make me better to fight the robot (or zombie) Armageddon.

Bastard!

Violent Video Games: I Can See for Miles and Miles...

From Techdirt:

Nearly six years ago, we wrote about a study showing that playing video games can help improve your vision, and now there's another study showing that such video games can help improve vision -- specifically contrast sensitivity, which is noted to be "important in situations such as driving at night, or in conditions of poor visibility." But, of course, rather than paying attention to all that, we get stories about how all violent video games must be banned.

It's a delicate balance and a controversy that will always be around, especially as games for next-gen consoles (and those coming after that) are only going to get more and more realistic. Unfortunately, the studies and research and thoughts are all reliant on tests trying to quantify subjectivity. Vision is measurable and objective, but violent tendencies and video games rely on hundreds of different personality and history variables that really can't be converted to reliable numbers. And even the worst studies hit on correlation - not causality - which is the rule more than the exception in psychological studies.

What are your thoughts? Are video games too violent? Is there good in them if they have benefits? Do you think brain exercise titles that have appeared recently for the Nintendo DS and Wii can replace the violent nature of war games and still deliver the benefits?