Skip to main content

Powering Up – Rebecca Mileham ****

This is one of a small series of books linked to the Dana Centre at the Science Museum in London. I’m a great fan of the Dana Centre – it’s a stylish cafe bar, where most evenings there is an informal and interactive session on once science topic or another. Like the Café Scientifique movement, it’s a great way of getting the science message across in a non-threatening way.
The point of the Dana Centre is to explore science and society and to get across aspects of science through the sort of thing that grabs people’s attention – and like it or not, computer games provide an excellent platform for such an analysis. Unlike the companion volume Being Virtual, which has very little science in its exploration of the online world, Rebecca Mileham’s book makes a point of going into the science behind different aspects of our relationship with computer games, from whether they effect your health and mood to their potential for helping us learn, and for changing our views on the world. (It was interesting that the latter part didn’t mention games with a religious message.)
These books are strong on design – I loved the cover (taken from the advertising material of a manufacturer), but the only trouble is the medium can sometimes conspire to obscure the message. I hated the big, multicoloured pull quotes, which just made the book harder to read, and some of the photographs seemed to be in there on a ‘we’ve got full colour on every page, we’d better get an image in’ basis. It’s also very difficult to write a book like this in a neutral way, and it’s very obvious that Mileham believes that computer games are wonderful, and whenever she receives negative evidence, it tends to be presented in a ‘yes, but…’ way that plays down its importance.
In the end, there’s a slight similarity between the desperate attempts to show how valuable computer games are to us with those who try to justify manned space missions by all the spin-off benefits. We’ve got teflon, guys, and er… er… pens that write upside down. I don’t say this as an anti-gamer. A good number of years ago I made my living from playing computer games – not (before my children collapse in an amused heap) as a prizewinning competitor but as a reviewer. But there is a dangerous road in attempting to imbue what is often just a bit of fun with high moral and functional aims.
A few small moans. It would have been nice to have had a bit more history to put this into context. And occasionally the ‘science’ lacks analysis. There’s wide-eyed description of a couple of devices for mental control of games that suggest that they work as effectively as traditional controllers, where in fact they’ve a long way to go yet. I’m also a bit doubtful about the final chapter where Mileham asks what the barriers are that ‘keep games from reaching into lives otherwise saturated with media.’ There’s an assumption that those people would benefit from having this happen, an assumption that isn’t really proved by the rest of the book. Arguably they would benefit a lot more from experiencing less media and more real life. Although briefly touched on, not enough is made in this chapter of the reason many one-time adult gamers like me don’t play any more. Family life doesn’t just take up gaming time – it’s more important.
That said, this a good and thoughtful book with some revealing exploration of the science behind our interaction with games that can shake the stereotypes of how games influence and entertain us. Play on.

Paperback:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that ‘Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to Keep a Plane in the Sky - Alex Davies ****

If there's one big gap in the science writing sphere, it's popular engineering (you can quibble over whether engineering is science, but where else would you put popular engineering?). Alex Davies does the field a real service with this insightful introduction to the world of test engineering. The concept is simple. If we build something and sell it, we need to test it to make sure that it won't fail in a way that's dangerous to the consumer. The most obvious example is airliners, which feature at some length, but this applies to everything from cuddly toys to hair straighteners: someone needs to predict what could go wrong and to put the product through its paces to see if it will survive under any reasonable circumstances. When Davies is telling a story of test engineering in action, the book is a delight. He opens with the way that real bears are used to test if bears can get into coolers and trash cans - and the impressive ways these animals can  circumvent human in...
Post a Comment
Read more

On the Equality of All Things - Carlo Rovelli ****

There is a wide gulf between the worldviews of physicists and philosophers. Many physicists present a rather sweetly naive, child-like view of the world, where philosophers bring a distinctly more adult, cynical tone. This being the case, it can be a little worrying when a physicist dips a toe into the philosophical mire. Infamously, in The Grand Design , Stephen Hawking and co-author Leonard Mlodinow told us that philosophy was now dead because science could deal with anything it had previously been needed for. Thankfully, Carlo Rovelli is not trying to do away with philosophy, though it has to be said that when he veers into the topic that physicist's naivety can make it feel like the philosophising of an earnest eighteen-year-old. Take the opening paragraph, which tells us 'electrons and minds, stones and laws, judgements and galaxies do not essentially differ in nature from one another. They are notions that illuminate each other'. I almost expected a Pink Floyd soundtr...
Post a Comment
Read more