It is hard to deny the good brought to society by the computer revolution. I began my work career before the age of fax machines. Drafting was done in pencil on a large table with drafting machines mounted to them, not on multiple screens plugged into a computer. My phone has more functionality and computing power than every piece of office equipment in the entire company where I began my career in the early 80's.
But it is also hard to deny there hasn't been a downside.
The advent of videogames, especially the sophisticated role playing games that began to increase in popularity in the late 90's and early double aughts as personal computing power increased and the corresponding cost of that power and hardware decreased, changed more than we knew.
We figured it was just harmless entertainment, but it is a fact that human psychology responds to repetition and as kids spent hours upon hours intellectually, physically and emotionally immersed in these games, it is impossible to believe there wasn't an imprint left in their minds. That imprint is even more powerful now that those kids are now adults, still playing them, and the games have improved to the point of virtual reality where players are inside the games in ways never before possible.
The Covid pandemic was a test of how people might respond to a world completely converted to an online presence. If you felt a little like a lab rat, you weren't far wrong. If you were like me, your meetings went from face to face to Teams, Zoom, Google Meet or some other form of virtual presence overnight and instead of sitting in a conference room, you were sitting in front of your computer at home, alone.
Mega media corporations like Google, Facebook and Microsoft are inviting people to enter a world where life is lived in the virtual world.
Now comes the birthing pains of workable AI that is already powerful enough to create avatars for the human presence and to "think" and "speak" for that avatar. Lonely people can create a virtual girlfriend or boyfriend - and we are about 30 seconds away from a synthetic robotic companion powered by ChatGPT or Google Bard.
Blade Runner, anyone?
I have no doubt that playing Madden increases the mental acuity of young football players by placing them in more situations in a short period of time than they might face in several years on the practice and game fields - but if I accept this learning, I must also theorize that the same is happening in other role playing game environments.
All this has facilitated social change and I believe it is a force more powerful than the influence of the family unit. In many situations, computers are replacing human parents, teachers and extended families. I also believe such a cultural change is responsible for the social contagions like transgenderism - and likely more psychological deviations to come.
Transgenderism has an all too familiar videogame quality to it - it is the same practice of shedding a physical reality for a virtual one where a person can create an image and a life out of anything they want. Males can role play as female characters, females as male, humans can become aliens, sentient animals - pretty much anything they want. Death is conquered - when you run out of life force, recharge it - or just create another character and live on.
But it isn't just transgenderism, this virtual existence has also devalued human relationships, eroded social mores and even to some extent, impacted the views of the sanctity of human life.
People create a delusionary existence in their own minds when faced with situations that are undesirable and untenable. It's not unknown that people escape to their minds when they are unhappy with their physical lives or environments. For centuries, such an escape has been recognized as a mental illness.
But today, we sell these delusions as if they were crack pipes in one of Eric Adams' drug paraphernalia street corner vending machines.
I'm not saying that videogames are uniquely responsible for our cultural tide going out, but I am saying that it should be understood an balanced out by bringing our kids back to reality.
The two parent family unit is more important now than ever.
Haven’t played video games since I got bored watching others play Pong!
I can remember lots of pre-computer games we played that we might not have told our parents about.