The World's Lost All Their (Virtual) Marbles

Those who know me, know I'm a bit of a technophobe. My mobile can sit under my bed for days, and I would prefer a letter over an e-mail any day. Although a friend pointed out that if we only contacted through letters, that cheeky spontaneous evening out would have lost any cheeky spontaneity. Anyway, I was idly watching that old piece of technology called the 'television' as I made a coffee when I nearly choked on my decaf. A cheery voice introduced a brand spanking new game for the Nintendo DS, Art Academy. The electronic game that teaches you to draw and paint… using a stylus. The press release states that you can learn ‘real-world art skills’ by using this clever piece of kit. Call me an old cynic, but what is wrong with actually getting a pencil and paper and doing it in real life? It’s just another one of those useless inventions that is supposed to make all those relatively easy parts of life, just that little bit easier, like all those apps.

Wow, I never would have known...

There are now apps to help you split the bill between friends, monitor the regularity of your monthly cycle, and even calculate how long it is till Christmas. The worst culprits though are the Nintendo DS ‘Imagine’ series. There’s ‘Imagine Babies’ where you can ‘Imagine’ that you're a student babysitter (because that is the most desirable position of them all), or ‘Imagine Cooking’ where, yep, you guessed it, you can imagine that you’re cooking, that's not going to fill the gap when you're hungry now is it. These used to be things one could do oneself, quite happily in the real world. I mean, what happens if you do a painting at your virtual Art Academy and you think ‘by George, that would look bloody marvellous in the front room,’ what do you do? Grab a couple of nails and jam it into the wall, hoping the batteries don’t run out, or is this when the 'real-world art skills' come in? I suppose you could take a canvas and some paints and copy it, or maybe, just maybe, you could take a canvas and some paints and do it without the Nintendo! Now that’s a novel idea…

This picture needs no words...