It’s perplexing the American school system (and no other that I know of) doesn’t employ video games as teaching tools, since they’re both satisfying and edifying and can allow students to pursue knowledge at a personalized pace. It’s a real lost opportunity to think learning can’t be vibrant and fun.

Beyond the classroom, Nicholas Carr wonders why software is created to pose no obstacles to us, to not challenge us but replace us. He addresses this point, among others, in an excellent discussion with Tom Chatfield of BBC Future. An excerpt:

Should life be more like a video game?

Tom Chatfield:

I was glad to see that you use video games in the book as an example of human-machine interactions where the difficulty is the point rather than the problem. Successful games are like a form of rewarding work, and can offer the kind of complex, constant, meaningful feedback that we have evolved to find deeply satisfying. Yet there is also a bitter irony, for me, in the fact that the work some people do on a daily basis is far-less skilled and enjoyable and rewarding. 

Nicholas Carr:

Video games are very interesting because in their design they go against all of the prevailing assumptions about how you design software. They’re not about getting rid of friction, they’re not about making sure that the person using them doesn’t have to put in much effort or think that much. The reason we enjoy them is because they don’t make it easy for us. They constantly push us up against friction – not friction that simply frustrates us, but friction that leads to ever-higher levels of talent.

If you look at that and compare it to what we know about how people gain expertise, how we build talent, it’s very, very similar. We know that in order to gain talent you have to come up against hard challenges in which you exercise your skills to the utmost, over and over again, and slowly you gain a new level of skill, and then you are challenged again. 

And also I think, going even further, that the reason people enjoy videogames is the same reason that people enjoy building expertise and overcoming challenges. It’s really fundamentally enjoyable to be struggling with a hard challenge that we then ultimately overcome, and that gives us the talent necessary to tackle an even harder challenge.

One of the fundamental concerns of the book is the fear that we are creating a world based on the assumption that the less we have to engage in challenging tasks, the better. It seems to me that that is antithetical to everything we know about what makes us satisfied and fulfilled and happy.•