Technology

Today’s Fragmented Church Needs to Fully Engage in the Activities of Social Media

Tamara Dull — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 07:25:59 -0700

...so that she can stay connected as a family and effectively reach each community in our postmodern world.

Do you agree with this statement? If so, why? If not, why not?

This is my working thesis statement - which means I might change it - for a case study assignment in my Transforming Contemporary Culture class at Fuller.

For this case study, I am supposed to select a cultural theme that is relevant to my current ministry, analyze the interplay between the two, and then propose an alternate, missiological approach. I will be analyzing how the church is currently engaged with social media, and then discuss how Semper Vita plans to engage. If you'd like to learn more about Semper Vita, check out the blog site at www.sempervita.org.

So what do you think about this thesis statement? Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

Today's fragmented church needs to fully engage in the activities of social media so that she can stay connected as a family and effectively reach each community in our postmodern world.

Which Social Networks Do You Belong To and Why?

Tamara Dull — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:13:26 -0700

MySpace. Facebook. Classmates. MyYearBook. Bebo. LiveJournal. BlackPlanet. Hi5. LinkedIn. Tagged. Reunion. 360.Yahoo. Imeem. Friendster. Orkut. Flixster. Fubar. Tickle. CafeMom. Xanga. Yuku. Twitter. Ning. UrbanChat. AsianTown.

As of February 2008*, these are the top 25 social networking sites - and 84% of online consumers belong to at least one online social network. Needless to say, there is a whole lot of social networking going on.

Since I'm relatively new to the ConversantLife community, I would like to take a moment and learn more about your social networking habits, specifically:

Which social network(s) do you belong to?
Why did you join the social network(s)?
Which one(s) do you keep up with and which one(s) are gathering web dust? And why?
How valuable is social networking to you? If it all went away tomorrow, would you care?

So please jump in and share with us your social networking story. Next week, I'll share some more interesting social networking facts and trends.

Thanks for your time and I hope you have a great week!

* Source: American Marketing Association report, Social Networking: My Space, Your Space and Their Space: Connecting With Your Customers in Online Social Networks, www.marketingpower.com, July 2008.

Have Your People Call My People

Tamara Dull — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:36:27 -0700

Have you seen the latest American Express commercial with Ellen Degeneres and Beyonce? If you haven't, you can check it out below.

The ad centers around a common phrase from the 80's - have your people call my people - which clearly makes the ad more entertaining. I mean, who says that anymore? If you do, well...hmmm... Today, it's all about text messaging and social networking - directly - with our own network of BFFs.

When I think about technology and the church, many churches are still living in the Have your people call my people age, while the rest of the world is planning to cu@12. It's a crazy and exciting time we live in.

Hi, my name is Tamara, and welcome to my blog. I invite you to join me as we talk about the recent (and not-so-recent) kewl technologies that are out there. We'll also take a look at ways the church and faith community - perhaps your own - take advantage (or not) of these technologies. That discussion may get a bit spicy because there are clearly those that believe technology is a secular thing and should be avoided at all costs.

Let's start there and see where the conversation takes us. Thank you for visiting my blog and I hope to engage in some meaningful and fun discussions with you in the weeks and months to come.

More On Grand Theft Auto

John Mark Reynolds — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:14:22 -0700

Bottom Line: I love gaming and the best game of the year, based on reviews is Grand Theft Auto. Since the game has a lot of tough content, it seemed worth thinking about whether it was worth my time and money.

I decide that I could not play and did so publicly in part hoping that gamers could help me see what was good about the game. The results have not been promising for my chances to play the game.

Argument:

If you like gaming, and I like gaming, then Grand Theft Auto looks promising. It is well made, stretches the virtual reality envelope, and is by all accounts fun.

Fun is good.

But, the game has a “virtual character” engage in behavior that stretches (or at least tests) the boundaries of mainstream gaming. As games become more realistic, American culture is engaged is a social experiment to see what the boundaries are between entertainment and reality.

We don’t know what will come of such an experiment, but we are going to find out. We pretty much know violent media is bad for the soul. This is not in dispute in psychology.

Really everyone should read this article before commenting on the issue.

The choice facing me was simpler: I have one soul and a limited amount of entertainment time. What should I do with both?

I decided that Grand Theft Auto was morally objectionable and published my reasoning. I invited criticism and I got it. One board where the essay was posted is here. My quotations are drawn from the board since the responses were typical, better written than most, in the public domain, and profanity free.

Here are the defenses of the game or criticisms of my post, followed by my comments.

The Chill Out Response

You can’t reason people out of a position that they didn’t use reason to get into in the first place.

This is a version of the “chill out” response to my post. Why take a game so seriously?

Of course, part of me agrees. What is easy to think about (and quick) takes time to write down, qualify, and then for you to read. Why bother?

First, I am thinking this through for myself. I do want to be reasonable and I don’t want to adopt positions that when subject to reason collapse. That seems very dangerous.

Second, I often come to a position (”I want ice cream.”) without using reason (Mmmmmm. . . . ) and then talk myself out of it (calories . . .), so it seems false to say that you cannot reason at least some people out of decisions based on non-reason.

Third, I am going to spend scores of hours of my time playing the game, if I play it. Thinking about something in which I will have some serious money (given my entertainment budget) and even more serious time (given how little free time I have) is important. My entertainment choices have impacted me for good (the decision to play sports in high school) and bad over time.

Just because a thing is “for fun” does not mean all the consequences are fun any more than saying “I was just joking” makes everything I say acceptable.

Here is a version of this:

I think you are WAY over-analyzing this.

If you’re uncomfortable playing the game, don’t play it.

It’s not exactly one of the great philosophical questions of this Age.

Well, no. I have to think about those for a living. It requires much more than a couple of pages of blogging to make a decision about big ethical issues, religion, or the meaning of life.

Assuming that the person making this comment gives those questions the time they deserve, what is his hurry? Millions of people are spending millions of dollars and hours of their time playing a game that is very violent. What will come of it?

Psychological studies don’t look promising.

Shouldn’t we think about things we do?

The “Elvis Was Shocking Once Too” Response

The other typical comment I received was to dismiss concerns as typical cultural fears that never amount to anything. Elvis is the most frequently cited case of fears of decadence that amounted to nothing.

Let’s assume that these fears were overblown. Some fears after all. On the other hand, some fears are not overblown.

Which is it in this case?

Unless we know there are no wolves, the fact that someone once cried wolf when there was no wolf does not mean someone else is doing so now. Let’s get beyond this kind of facile response:

All those ghosts I ate playing Pac Man…I’m so ashamed!!!

A comparison of one cartoon character eating another cartoon character (neither looking anything like a real object) is surely different than highly realistic player characters beating (and being rewarded for beating) other characters, stealing (and being rewarded for stealing), and other unsavory actions. The cartoon sounds of Pac-Men are very different than the realistic sounds of Grand Theft Auto.

Sadly, it appears that some level of cartoon violence may also be bad for a person.

The data may suggest that my standards are too libertine!

I am assuming there is some way around such data (though I don’t see what) . . . and the evidence that violence in virtual reality is not good for even adults. That is a very, very generous assumption to those who would play GTA (including me!), but we should note that it may not be warranted.

Suppose (as a not foolish hypothesis) that at some point virtual violence has some negative effects (whatever they are) on gamers. Evidence seems to suggest that this may be true. Surely, our concerns about Grand Theft Auto would be much greater than about Pac-Man style games!

The response also ignores the fact that in the pornography and crudity of the game are not any more “unreal” than any other porn or crudity.

For what its worth I played one of the earlier GTA vehicles (so to speak). I enjoyed the missions as a driving challenge, and really enjoyed driving around to the sounds of “Speed Demon” and “Take it to the Limit”. I didn’t notice any dark side to the game, though its possible I wasn’t paying attention.

Maybe the later GTAs are worse, but games just don’t get made over a certain rating as WalMart won’t sell them. I would guess that the game is going to be ‘cleaner’ than you might expect from the advertising and the hype.

This response reminds me of the “I don’t listen to the words, I just listen to the music” argument. If a singer calls women disgusting names and celebrates racist rhetoric, then my ability “not to notice” disturbs me more than it encourages me. The same thing would be true if I could participate in a game that treats realistic looking people as objects, is filled with crudity, but could screen it all out to enjoy the driving simulator.

At what point have I trained myself to detach what I am hearing and seeing from self? Is that a good thing to learn?

That, of course, is a question each individual must decide.

Here is a another version of the same response with an important addition:

Wow - if you have the kind of time to write all that stuff you must have lots of time to play video games.

I have shot down over 10,000 aircraft in various air combat simulations. Some went down with no parachute so we gotta assune they died. Does all that killing mean I am a bad person?

No, of course not. However, I do question whether pretending for hours at a time to be an allied fighter pilot in World War II is morally the same as pretending to be a street thug. Killing in combat seems morally different from killing in a robbery after all.

The back story does make a difference. A book that celebrates Nazi violence may be no more “violent” than one that condemns it, but the first is wicked and the second is not. Whether I should take the time to read a wicked book will depend on my circumstances.

I cannot see intentionally pretending to be wicked for “fun.” Surely I could find better things to do with my time?

The usual response is that I must have a great deal of free time to spend this long on a game, but the time spent writing this post (twenty minutes or so) would hardly get me past the first stages of a game like Grand Theft Auto.

The “It is a Great Game, so It Must Be Good to Play It” Response

This might work if I were a game reviewer or in the industry in some way.

However, the fact that a thing is well made or well done does not mean it is morally good. Achilles was an excellent fighter, but not a good person.

The Game Teaches Me About Evil Response

The best reply (by far) I have received runs like this one:

I used the game to teach my kids about the realities of crime.

See, it’s easy to make a quick buck doing this two-bit crime, but watch.. If you want to get out of the trouble that two-bit crime caused you, you will now have to kill Mr. Police officer. Uh, oh, now you have to kill more. NOW YOU HAVE LOTS of COPS after you, and look they aren’t arresting you they are shooting to kill. That’s the way it works kids. Crime pays, it pays in more trouble than you want to deal with.

I can’t possibly be the only person who has done this.

The problem is that the behavior of the criminals, cops, and by standers in the game is unrealistic and so not very useful for a lesson.

To give two examples:

The urban landscape is inauthentic.

It is very easy to escape the cops (compared to real life). After all here in LA we know that in real life car chases rarely (never?) end in the escape of the con.

The game presents a false image of evil by making it more attractive than it is as well. Anybody who has worked with street people knows this is the case.

Surely there are better means of teaching these lessons? While junior is supposedly learning that “crime does not pay,” he is also being exposed to crudity, porn, and simulated violence.

Junior also learns that “wining” consists of defeating the good guys.

I will admit that I could learn about a very artificial form of evil this way, but I have never found that learning about evil is hard or takes me hours of time. It is much more difficult to learn to be high minded than to recognize vice.

The “We Have Always Had Crude Entertainment Defense”

Here is a typical version of this argument:

The same England that produced Shakespeare also produced John Ford and elevated bear-baiting to royal sport. And her Golden Age was just around the corner.

Well, yes, but bear-baiting is not why we remember it is a “golden age.” It is true that some people have always chosen debased forms of entertainment, but that does not mean we should rush to join them.

I think it is a good thing that we no longer find (most of us) bear-baiting amusing. I doubt that a taste for it produced one line of Milton.

“It Does Not Harm Me” Response

The personal testimonials are more persuasive at first glance. Here is one:

Personally — I don’t buy it. I am an occasional video-game player, and though I have not played GTA … I have played some violent games with definite adult content (God of War, for instance — a game that I cannot recommend highly enough). I am a conservative, a Christian, etc., and I just don’t buy that this particular video game (due to crudity, lust, whatever) is much of a concern for an adult mind. Children are a different situation entirely.

One should notice that there is no argument here. It does not deal with objections. It just reports “no harm here.”

O.K.

I will believe him for the sake of argument and because I have no reason to doubt him.

I don’t want to be the kind of person who is not offended by mindless crudity. I don’t want to see images of women being beaten for fun. The fact that show images do not horrify me is too bad.

But perhaps we have different goals . . .

The writer continues:

The analogous situation, to me, would be movies. I watch relatively violent movies, where foul language is fairly common, and occasional nudity/lust is certainly not unheard of. Among my favorite movies of late is The Departed — the language is consistently objectionable, and the movie is a general bloodbath … but, like GTA, it is a genuinely good movie. Gladiator, Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan, 300 and The Patriot were all bloodbaths. All are still entirely worth seeing. Despite my movie preferences, I remain the strong Christian conservative I was before viewing them.

I simply don’t buy that people of otherwise strong morality can be unwantingly corrupted by movies, video games, or even the occasional adult feature (which my wife and I have been known to very occasionally partake).

Weak moral conviction or weak marriages might be succeptible — truly strong values are likely not. Like money, “corrupting influences” do not destroy morality in men — they may simply expose deficiencies that were always there.

This person seems to believe that “strong morality” only consists in what one does . . . and that mental activity is not activity with moral content. Evidently, despite being a Christian, he disagrees with Our Lord about this. Jesus points out that anger and lust in the heart are (for the person angry or lusting) as damaging as anger or lust acted out.

Surely in the case of anger and bitterness, we know this is true. What not assume it is true of lust? I understand the writer’s desires, but not his confidence. Given how difficult it is to be good or even civilized, it seems morally reckless to toy mentally with ideas and then assume one can simply abandon them.

The writer can be married any way he likes. In my case, my goal is for a deep intimacy shared with no other person than my wife. We may not achieve it, but when we fell in love we vowed to try to give all to each other. I include my mind in that.

Of course, I often fail. Sometimes I failed intentionally and justified it, but doing so fell short of my deepest desires. The writer has chosen a different way. Good luck to him.

He should know that he cannot have both this deepest intimacy (cleaving mentally only to the beloved) and intentionally break those bonds.

As for the film examples. . . I dealt with this in my original post. I am no prude.

There are good reasons to watch great films as art. Great films may show evil as evil and so disturb our complacency. Nobody has yet effectively argued that Grand Theft Auto has a moral center or that it is great art.

It is a great game (by today’s standards), but the script (of parts I have seen) is hackneyed and the acting very, very marginal. It only looks good by the very low standards of games.

The final response I often get is “You Hate Games Any Way or You Are Judging Me, Fascist”

Here is one post more thoughtful than most along this line:

I scrolled about half way down and read all the negativity about games and such, but I’ll comment anyway…

GTA is a riot… All of them… I play them now that I have won them all, just to see the extreme depths of the games program.

Coming from the era of pac man and space invaders, and then picking up a game where you can steal cars, do drive by’s, hit jumps and do barrel rolls in cars and trucks, is cool. Am I now a mind full of mush because of it? No. I ain’t no different than before I picked up a PS2 controller.

Well, years later one would hope you would be. Supposing it has not made you more tolerant of crudity, then what could you have done with the entertainment time you spent of GTA?

Are you as mentally developed as you could have been?

A failure to degenerate is faint praise, since it could have been bought by a failure to advance.

Are you growing into real adult entertainment? Are your choices in entertainment good for you and not just “not causing you to kill people?”

The writer continues:

For all the naysayers around here that say this is “Bad for someone” is down right silly…

You don’t wanna play video games, don’t play. Although this author set him self up as first person, he is still sending a message. A message that I for one think is a waste of time…

Why is it silly? Some studies do show it is bad for you. What would persuade you? If you “wanna play” something, does that make it good?

I am sending a message: it is wrong for me to play. It looks like it would be a bad idea for others. What is wrong with the argument?

My fear is that time spent of GTA has been time not spent reading a good book or learning about arguments. You have the right to do as you please and I would not take that right away.

Just as you have the right to say I am wasting my time and am wrong, so I have the right to say your behavior in playing this game may be harmful to your soul.

The difference is that I have given reasons for my point of view and you have given none.

The fear is apparently that if I think a person wrong, I will want to keep them from playing. Read the following:

I think you are WAY over-analyzing this. If you’re uncomfortable playing the game, don’t play it. It’s not exactly one of the great philosophical questions of this Age.

Ah, but the object is to over-analyze, find it guilty, then work to eradicate it completely, because if someone who’s got the fear o’ God in him can be led astray by a game, can we possibly take a chance with those who didn’t have a good Bible teacher?

IOW, we’ve got people who don’t trust themselves to make good decisions, so they can’t trust anyone else to do the same.

You have the freedom to play this game. You should have that freedom.

I do not base that on my “trust” for you, but on my view of the role of government.

My “trust” for you has nothing to do with whether you should do what you have a right to do. I don’t think adultery should be illegal, but also don’t think anybody should do it.

For some reason in our culture, if it is “entertainment” we assume it cannot hurt anyone.

Surely another assumption is that if the harm is not obvious or immediate (killing someone), then it does not exist. We all know that some things hurt us, but do not manifest the harm until later and not directly.

The fact that one cannot see that harm the next day does not mean it is not there.

Apparently, the fact that this is “escapist entertainment” means that any worry about it is like worrying about Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Such people seem to think that any form of “virtual entertainment” is harmless to adults (assuming they are normal to begin with), but this seems obviously false given the psychological data.

My fear is that like too much of the culture, I too will justify what I want to do in the name of “fun.”

Ritual Disclaimers:

*(Not all unhelpful mental dispositions are or should be illegal so law is a bad way to judge whether a thing is good for me. Not all unhelpful mental dispositions are even “sinful” in and of themselves. What might provoke righteous indignation in one person might provoke snobbery or self-righteousness in me. It is of course easy to kid oneself.)

**(Important Disclaimer I: My thoughts are based on reviews of the game. I have not played it. That limits my ability to comment on the game and opens up the real possibility I am missing something “good” about it. Since however reviews of the games seem to agree on the content relevant to this review, I feel justified in writing it. I am open to emails that suggest I should reconsider this decision.

***(I am not in favor of censorship. People should have the ability to make the game, but should also consider whether they should. I have the right to worry about the impact of playing on self and on my culture. I don’t favor banning the game or access to the game for adults.

I do think adults should be able to discuss whether playing a game is good for them without screams of outrage. Most gamer magazines never seriously engage these questions.)

Why My Family Switched to Apple: Five Reasons

John Mark Reynolds — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:44:29 -0700

My family home schools. That means computers are necessary and everyone in the family has their own. I have been running a home network of seven computers for the last five years. It has been a nightmare job.

One day I noticed that my personal Mac was never causing me troubles. It was older and slow, but always doing its job. Once a hard drive crashed, but I had backups (which are easy to do) and after an evening of work was back in business.

Vista (outside of the marvelous media center application) has been horrid. Only an eight year old computer in the network (now too slow for most functions) did not constantly blue screen or cause other problems. XP by the end was marginally better, but looked like a Mac from a decade ago and was horrible at networking.

Virus software?

When it was not slowing everything down, it kept my computers from talking. I tried all the solutions. I have well informed honor students to bail me out. Slowly, I grew frustrated. This was stupid. My network was stupid . . . even when I started buying only standard parts and “name brands” to avoid all problems with a “driver” (how I loath the word . . .once associated with the joy of getting a car and now associated with computer crashes).

With Vista even brand new video cards were destroying my system. I tried three different cards . . . and had troubles with each one.

Slowly, one machine at a time, I have broken free of Vista and XP. How has it gone? Really well . . . and for five reasons that would not have been true a decade ago when I “went windows.” Here they are:

1. Google.

Google docs, calendar, and email now rule my house. My kids network on Google’s server. We don’t need a fast computer, just one fast enough to get to the Net. I let them write on Google docs (no expensive word processor for most jobs!) and archive their email there. It saves hard drive space for multimedia. I assume soon we will get the ten or so t-bytes of storage for free that even that job will require. Then as bandwidth increases I will say goodbye to most drives in the house (curse them!) forever.

There is no reason for me to use a separate calendar program now. I don’t need a machine compatible with work, since everything works with Google . . . my phone (Treo) and any computer tell me what I need to know and they don’t care what OS anybody is running.

That eliminates one big reason to keep a Windows machine.

2. On-line games.

Many of the best educational games and programs . . . even most of their favorite games of the non-educational sort (Neo-Pets and Runescape) are on-line. Why get a Windows machine?

Educational software (which I spend the most money on) has always been Mac friendly.

3. Wii

Want to play other kinds of games? Get a Wii. The Wii reminds me of why I loved gaming in the first place.

4. The Apple OS is insanely friendly to Windows.

Having experimented for several years, I have discovered that Apple no longer hides from the present domination of Windows as it once did. All my Apple machines easily network with Windows machines (Vista and XP) and read their data. The same is not true of the Windows machines. Bluntly, a Mac Mini networks with Vista machines more easily than Vista machines network with Vista machines with fewer errors.

I wake up and no Mac has crashed overnight. When I had six Windows machines running, one of them was always groaning in pain.

5. Ipod and the Iphone.

Both are Apple. Both are the best at what they do. Both network most easily and elegantly with Apple machines. Why not switch?

Ipods dominate our house. We bought another product (less expensive and “bigger”), only to discover that less expensive meant cheap and compatibility head aches. I don’t want to think about my technology much, just use it.

Ipods let me do it.

I cannot afford an Iphone yet, but seeing them makes me believe the same thing will be true.

Functionally, there is only one thing left that Windows machines do better than the Apples. Oddly, given Apple’s multimedia reputation, it is a media function.

I have two Vista machines left. One is to stream our DVD collection to the home network and the other is to use as an extender in another room. Apple does not read archived DVD material straightforwardly. I will not go through the “re-rip” again just to “go Apple.”

Technology is not my religion, but my servant. I buy the tech that works best.

I have no more desire to hack around with the software of Apple Television (too much of that for one lifetime) using weird second party applications, than I want to hack DVD content.

I simply want to archive my own video and use it easily. Windows will and Apple will not . . . requiring me to “convert” my files from their native format to something else. We all know that this is a bad and time consuming idea whatever a product declares.

When Apple Television treats DVD material as it treats music, then the last Windows machine will vanish. When my DVD will go into a Mac, be ripped and stored in its native format, and then can play the same way, my days with Windows is over.

I am still not sure why this is not true. Why is Apple so video awkward?

(I can play the movies in the DVD player, but Media Center on Vista is easily modifiable to stream them to its wonderful interface and that is not true of Apple Front Row. . . yet.)

I am no computer expert, but I have been around computers for some time. I started networking on Q-link on my C-64 and taught a “class” in philosophy on that network. Imagine a discussion where you could read the text far faster than the network could get it to you! I have seen revolutions in computers come and go, but there is a big one coming now and Microsoft is missing it.

The movement toward universal applications that break the OS barrier is one of the biggest changes I have seen. I don’t think Microsoft gets it. Apple is too expensive for what I get, but since I buy used that is not a big issue. As the Wii proved, in the new world of platform neutrality the processor matters less than ease of use and getting to the Net.

The Search for Online Truth

Conversant Lifestyle — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:02:12 -0700

If there's one constant about technology that trumps all others, it's this: change. We can be sure that whatever technology is cool and useful and popular today will be replaced by something that's cooler, more useful, and more popular tomorrow. It's just the way it is.

With truth it's different. Unless you're a relativist, truth doesn't change. We need to know that what's true today will still be true tomorrow. We also need to know that the content we access, whether it's on a printed page or in some kind of electronic form, is trustworthy.

At ConversantLife.com, we are committed to both technology and truth. We are using the latest technology to present trustworthy content by a team of passionate and knowledgeable communicators, all the while inviting our users to comment and post content of their own in the form of news stories that have faith implications.

There's a trend in this technology/truth arena that goes to the heart of what ConversantLife.com is all about. It's called Web 3.0, defined by Internet guru Jason Calacanis as: "the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technlogy as an enabling platform." In an editorial called The Search for Online Truth, Matthew Kinne gives this summary of this trend:

"This third-wave of Internet usage and protocol restores the value of content by restoring validity, truthfulnes and, hence, usefulness to the information presented online."

Web 2.0 websites (such as Facebook and Wikipedia) will continue to be enormously popular, but for people who are looking for trustworthy content--not presented in a "top down" authoritative manner, but in a winsome, conversational way--Web 3.0 is the answer. We're just pleased that the trend is finally catching up to what ConversantLife.com is all about.

McGyver Syndrome

Matt Anderson — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:22:35 -0800

Okay, this guy is really, really smart. And yes, I really want to try this at home (click through to watch).

Yup, you saw that right. He just took a normal laptop computer and turned it into a “tablet pc.” And in this video, he does cool “Minority Report” like tricks using the same technology.

Nothing makes nerdy guys like me say “whoa” more than surprising uses to everyday technology. Call it the “MacGyver syndrome.” For you youngsters in the audience, MacGyver could take an orange peel, a hairclip, and a stopwatch and create, well, just about anything he wanted.

And yes, it was 80s TV at its worst (check out that hair!). But it inspired me and my friends to take apart just about everything electronic we could find in hopes of creating devastatingly useful and cool devices.

We always failed. And probably made our moms awful angry in the process.

Somewhere in here there’s an important lesson. But I’m not sure what it is. In the absence of one, let’s just all say “whoa” together.

Whoa.

Exit question: with technology like that, why are teachers still using whiteboards?

Bonus exit question: Forget buying a Wiimote for every teacher. What fifth grade boy wouldn’t be fascinated by putting together this system for a teacher, and happily volunteer his Wiimote for day use by the class? This could be science education at its best (and yes, I am overly excited about this)!

(Hat tip to my brother for pointing out the video)