Conscious technology

In keeping with the motto of our narrative game classes (from "Videogames for Humans"):

...moving away from hyper-realistic and immersive gaming that distract from reality to democratic, "empathy" game development through digital storytelling told by people often left out of commercial video gaming (authors and characters). Twine gaming is about communication, interacting, resting, healing, and growing over collecting, shooting, and accomplishing. Ultimately, games developed on Twine aim to connect, rather than isolate you from reality, to encourage you to see a better world rather than to escape the one we're in.

Check out this PBS Newshour interview of Tristan Harris of Time Well Spent, his initiative to promote ethical design for digital devices. To inoculate our lives from persuasive technology that stokes craving that in his words, provokes a "race to the bottom of our brain stem".

I hope if nothing more at the end of our 5 week Saturday Enrichment series, kids learn what it's like to build games without a lot of bells and whistles and instead, let what they want to say guide what they build.