How Literacy Impacts Reading and Gaming

For Ellie, that charade contributed to her waning interest in computer games and simulations fi-om its highpoint in middle childhood. Reasonably versed in computer technologies and a fan of emerging online forums such as Tumblr, she agreed to talk about her play in virtual worlds not as an enthusiast, but as something of a philistine. She enjoyed Second Life—but only up to a point. "The imaginative part stopped for me when I stopped designing my avatar," she told me. Further opportunities...

 Ways of Being "Good at Math"

It’s a common misconception that someone who’s good at math is someone who can compute quickly and accurately. But mathematics is a broad discipline, and there are many ways to be smart in math. Some students are good at seeing relationships among numbers, quantities, or objects. Others may be creative problem solvers, able to come up with nonroutine ways to approach an unfamiliar problem. Still others may be good at visually representing relationships or problems or translating from one ...

 If Everyone is Altruistic

The day will come, says Spencer, when altruistic inclination will be so well embodied in our organism itself that people will compete for opportunities of self-sacrifice and immolation. When altruistic inclinations are implanted in everyone, how will opportunities arise to apply them? Either such a state presupposes the existence of persecutors, tormentors and tyrants, or else the general urge to sacrifice oneself will engender benefactors who will turn into tormentors and persecutors merel...

 Innovation Means Recombination

...the process of innovation often relies heavily on the combining and recombining of previous innovations, the broader and deeper the pool of accessible ideas and individuals, the more opportunities there are for innovation. We are in no danger of running out of new combinations to try. Even if technology froze today, we have more possible ways of configuring the different applications, machines, tasks, and distribution channels to create new processes and products than we could ever exhaus...

 Human Drives That Open Us to Memes

Here are a few second-order instinctual drives some people seem to have that are all opportunities for memes to take advantage of: - Belonging. Humans are gregarious-that is, they like company. There are any number of evolutionary reasons for the existence of this drive, including safety in numbers, economies of scale, and simply the presence of more potential mates. Memes that give people a feeling of belonging to a group have an advantage over memes that don't. - Distinguishing yourself. ...