Cognitive upgrade

Over the last couple of weeks I looked at several articles pointing to absolutely irrevocable scientific proof that video games can improve the functioning of your brain. Researchers have established beyond reasonable doubt that gaming sharpens not only your hand-eye coordination and a series of knee-jerk responses to sensory stimuli, but also reasoning skills (as proven by scientifically valid tests). Too bad we have not pressed our daughter to play more video games. The other day I was telling her about some researchers (probably resembling the ones proclaiming the beneficial effects of video games) who have started using their own kids as experimental subject – filming them since their birth (sometimes round the clock) and asking them to perform batteries of cognitive tasks and tests. She cringed, and that’s too bad. If we had exposed her to the advantageous brain modification induced by video games, she would surely have been able to reason her way through this common-sensical family arrangement and understand what it really is - a true cost-benefit nirvana. I have a close friend who is an engineer with a Ph.D. from MIT. As we were once having a debate of some technological issue, he looked at the antique CD player in our living room and said something like: "You know, the amount of human ingenuity that has been built into this device rivals the highest achievements of modern civilization." I would go even further and say high-functioning geeks have done us a great service few people appreciate. They have kept and developed what's valuable in Western civilization, and discarded a host of silly taboos based on needless anxieties. They have thus been able to design mountains of electronic gizmos, rational-choice models of addiction, strings of risk-assessment equations, and what not. And many would use their kids as handy experimental subjects for the benefit of science and all humanity.