There was a programme on BBC last night which followed James May, a gaggle of students - I said gaggle - and some professional architects as they attempted to build a man bearing bridge out of Meccano. On the whole, I felt the programme was good and I was I impressed with
- the dedication of the students
- the initial design for the bridge (a crazy one-way affair- how cool is that?)
- the ultimate success of the project.
James did, however, make a particular point I wasn’t thrilled about. As part of the opening preamble, which introduced us to Meccano and described how fondly he and his generation regard it James drew an unfavourable comparison between Meccano and the Nintendo Wii slamming the Wii as a substandard toy. He then washed down this acrid dose of nepotism with a rather broad swipe at the digital age in general. His main gripe with the digital age is the tangible properties of the cogs and screws of Meccano and therefore the relative emptiness of the digital domain of blips and light.
I suspect, if pushed, James would concede that the 'digital age' is actually a rather exciting prospect and furthermore that his comment was mostly just for a bit of TV flam for affect but I do think it's worth defending the Wii, its peers, and all the former computer gaming generations.
I agree that Meccano is great. We get to see and understand how mechanics works. It's simple yet boundless. I love the practical aspect of the 'toy' but the notion of it being inherently virtuous because of its material’s physicality is romantic and wrong. When I was a child I was addicted to my Spectrum 128k much like, I assume, kids are now addicted to Wii's. It gave me pure gaming joy and an insight into programming which has now forged a great career for me to support my family. To me this a practical gift from my childhood toy but for others still it has galvanised skills for them to run offices or conjure spectacular images, build websites to reach millions or even design bridges. I don’t purport that kids playing computer games suddenly become Google cracking wizards but neither does making an axle in Meccano qualify you to work the next day in a car production line. The best either can hope for is familiarising a child with the language of its field.
We can't begrudge the Wii, PS3 et al because kids are learning how to interact with computers and learn their habits which are now more ubiquitous than cams and pulleys ever were. And whilst the perception, as perpetuated by James, of science/mechanics/engineering’s technical difficulty is easy for our fathers to assert because they can point to trains and bridges and say this is our world, the reality is more complicated. Computers are a science and as worthy and demanding as any other science but a command of them is just not, I don’t think, so easily paraded as steel and steam.
James' passion for Meccano is, I think, rooted in the magic of opening a Meccano set and seeing, not a collection of shiny struts and bolts, but an infinite metropolis of whirling delight just waiting for you to give it life. And who would deny the magic found there. I can't. But I can say there is magic too in pixels. Something like 'LittleBIGPlanet' has so much creative juice flowing through it it's hard to do it enough justice or the invention of say Guitar Hero or the simplicity of Tetris or the beauty of WALL-E. These arresting digital products will inspire kids to become masters of these electric plastic boxes in whatever realm they care to take the computer. I think the generation in love with Meccano, and the technology it represents, find the world they became men in is now wrought with what they see as an 'easy' technology which has replaced theirs, but whilst I understand this changing of the ‘toy’ guards happens to every generation - along with music, kids TV, trousers and hair - it is progress and one day our generation is going to wake up to find their childhood toys were just the beginning of a symbiotic and amazing relationship with computers.
So until we have to defend Playstations from our kid's pocket-sized edible robots made from holograms let's give the Wii players a break and acknowledge the merit in good interactive design and a long life with computers.