Careful what you re-invent
Nintendo DS: No Good for Brain Training
A recent snippet that we published reminded me of my own encounter with the ‘brain trainer’ apparently I am rated as an 80 year old. Which makes me smile, as people often comment on how quickly I am able to navigate their computer systems, write SQL queries and generally fix problems. Which got me asking, what are these devices actually training the brain to do, and should we be remotely interested?
As you get older you do become rather cynical of these ‘new fangled’ gizmo’s, which after all is said and done are simply re-hashed puzzles. If it is brown and square and has ‘I am a box’ stamped all over it, then it is probably a box. I wonder why there appears to be this obsession to re-label everything, after all - doesn’t it only make life more confusing. A bit like software actually, keep it as simple as practical and it will serve you well, start re-engineering it simply to be ‘more interesting’ and you are on a slippery slope to nowhere.
Charles Douthwaite publishes Web Snippets in the Manx Examiner, published every Tuesday on The Isle of Man.
Charles
I would have bet you were more than 80 myself
Paul