Games and Noise

I thought the point about interpreting noise and decoding messages was really interesting, because I used to be really interested in cryptography. My interest really started with Alan Turing, one of my personal idols, who helped build the machine that decrypted the German codes during World War II. This is a good example of the Maximum Entropy Formalism, where you leave your mind most open to ideas to find the right solution. In this type of encryption, each letter is not only encrypted, it not necessarily encrypted in the same way as the letter previous. If they had expected the letters to follow the patterns they already knew, they would never have decrypted them.

I also thought Johnson's points about the good parts of video games are important to understand. Especially the feedback you get when playing. It made me think about these games aimed at children, which test and develop reading and spelling skills, and how those games are probably better in a lot of ways to teach children on their own than just books, since they'll get immediate feedback. I know a lot of parents worry about kids using computers too much, because they think they are mindless and have no good qualities.

I played games like that when I was younger, and probably they helped me understand things like homophones faster, because they were fun. Instead of just reading in a book (not that I disliked books, I actually loved them), you were matching up words to clear a carrot patch and get points in a game. The games are way more advanced and helpful now. I think it would be really interesting to look at all these games again and study what qualities are most helpful.