Bad at video games? Your brain structure may be at fault

I am on the old side of the generation that grew up with video games as a ubiquitous presence in their life. I clearly recall the world's worst Atari port of one of the greatest game of all time—Pac Man—and I even remember playing what is widely considered to be the worst game of all time, the Atari 2600's E.T. (I still clearly recall how hard it was). Today, video games focus less on forcing you to pump more and more quarters into an arcade machine punishing difficulty and more on telling a story and making the experience a bit gentler on the novice gamer.

Prior cognitive, psychological, and neurological studies have shown that expert video game players are capable of outperforming novices in measures of attention and perception. They also have demonstrated that, when novices train on video games for 20-plus hours, they experienced no measurable increase in cognitive ability. These two pieces of information would seem to point to an innate difference between expert and novices gamers, instead of suggesting that gaming is a skill that can be learned.

ars technica

The Human Shuffle

The first time I entered ChatRoulette—a new website that brings you face-to-face, via webcam, with an endless stream of random strangers all over the world—I was primed for a full-on Walt Whitman experience: an ecstatic surrender to the miraculous variety and abundance of humankind. The site was only a few months old, but its population was beginning to explode in a way that suggested serious viral potential: 300 users in December had grown to 10,000 by the beginning of February. Although big media outlets had yet to cover it, smallish blogs were full of huzzahs. The blog Asylum called ChatRoulette its favorite site since YouTube; another, The Frisky, called it “the Holy Grail of all Internet fun.” Everyone seemed to agree that it was intensely addictive—one of those gloriously simple ideas that manages to harness the crazy power of the Internet in a potentially revolutionary way.


New York Mag

Thanks, Melvillian.

FutureWorld

Pope asks priests to become more Web savvy

The Pope is asking priests to become more media savvy by preaching to the faithful from the Internet as well as the pulpit.

In his message for the Catholic Church's 2010 World Day for Social Communications, Pope Benedict XVI called on the ministry to use the latest technologies, such as Web sites and blogs, to preach the gospel and encourage a dialogue with their practitioners.

Scheduled for May 16, the theme of the World Day will be "The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: New Media at the Service of the Word." In his message released Sunday, Pope Benedict told people that church communities have traditionally relied on modern media to open the lines of communication. And as the culture changes, the church needs to use the latest technologies, especially if it wants to reach younger people.


cnet news

Brain Scans Reveal Video Gamers' Secrets

How adeptly you play a video game may indicate how big some parts of your brain are, the authors of a new study report.

Researchers found that certain regions of the brain are larger in young people who do a better job of playing a specially designed video game.

In other words, all those people who devote their days to their Wiis and XBoxes may be packing some cerebral heat, at least when it comes to the sheer size of what's inside their skulls.

Business Week

Accounts invaded, computers infected – human rights activists tell of cyber attacks

Well-known human rights advocates in China and a Tibetan rights activist in the United States have disclosed that their Gmail accounts have been compromised.

They came forward after Google's announcement of a sustained cyber attack on activists and other illicit accessing of accounts, but stressed that the problem goes back much further. Some in China said they had repeatedly suffered from hacking and blamed the authorities .

Guardian

Forrester Says Tech Recession Is Over

U.S. and global spending on IT hardware and software will bounce back strongly in 2010, market watcher Forrester said Tuesday.

The research firm is calling for tech spending in the U.S. to grow 6.6% this year, to $568 billion, after being down 8.2% in 2009. Worldwide spending will jump 8.1% to more than $1.6 trillion, following a decline of 8.9% last year.

InformationWeek

Body scanners can store, send images, group says

Washington (CNN) -- A privacy group says the Transportation Security Administration is misleading the public with claims that full-body scanners at airports cannot store or send their graphic images.

The TSA specified in 2008 documents that the machines must have image storage and sending abilities, the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said.

CNNTravel

Roxxxy

No. 12 Looks Just Like You