Victoria Summerley: Town Life

Wednesday 01 February 2006 01:00 GMT
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It's very fashionable in certain parental classes to disapprove of any combination of children and computers. All that hunching over a screen; so bad for the posture. All those shoot-'em-up games; so bad for the moral development. All those porn sites; so bad for impressionable minds. This usually lasts until the child gets to 10 and has to do School Projects, whereupon the parent is down to PC World faster than a rat up a drainpipe.

My children, like most pupils, use the computer nearly all the time. Very occasionally, this is for educational purposes. I've managed to remain immune to the lure of games until now, but I have to admit I have fallen prey to Zoo Tycoon, which my daughter bought with her Christmas money.

If you were the sort of person who liked playing with toy farms, or dolls' houses, do not buy this game. You will become addicted and spend hours buying Plains Zebras or African Elephants and landscaping their enclosures with Savannah Terrain and Yellow Fever Acacia Trees. At least (I persuaded myself as I constructed a rocky escarpment for my American Bighorn Sheep) it's vaguely educational and involves absolutely no violence - even if you let the lions loose on the guests.

Most of the time, however, my children use their computers for communication, via MSN Messenger. I've never met an adult who knows how to use this, but it seems to involve the use of multisyllabic sign-ons, from which are generated monosyllabic conversations.

A typical conversation might go thus: ThebeatlessaidallyouneedislovebutI preferchocolate:

Hi

Ineednew£205uggbootsbutmydadwon'tbuythem:

gtg

ThebeatlessaidallyouneedislovebutIpreferchocolate:

Bi

As communication goes, it's not quite up there with Horace Walpole, but it's a start. Indeed, when my son got his e-mail address, he sent me the first communication I have received from him, other than a birthday card, that was unprompted by maternal questioning.

My son, like many 15-year-old males, is not the most articulate of individuals, so I was puzzled when I heard him loudly declaiming as I passed his door the other evening. For one wild moment, I wondered whether he was auditioning for the school play (yeah, right, pigs might join the Red Arrows and give a display at the Biggin Hill Air Fair).

Upon investigation, it appeared that he was setting up "speakable items" on his Mac. These are not to be confused with the unspeakable items on his floor, such as dirty socks or last week's sports kit, but a technological innovation that gives some applications the power to carry out your voice commands. I copied that last bit off the internet because those pigs I mentioned have more chance of whizzing over the Kentish countryside in supersonic jets than I have of getting my head around computer technology or descriptions thereof.

Anyway, being an American invention, you have to speak, loudly and clearly, in an American accent before the "speakable item" will consent to do your bidding. So there was my son, sounding like a cross between a southern Baptist preacher and George W Bush, shouting "Hahtmay-yal" (Hotmail) and "Ammer-zahn" (Amazon) in order to access his favourite websites.

The "speakable item" also has an American accent, and it even tells interactive jokes, but here the skill of the computer geeks at Apple starts to fall down. The jokes are delivered in a metallic, robotic monotone. Even worse, they're not at all funny. Here's a sample: "Knock, knock." "Who's there?" (Or rather, "Whooo's THAYre".) "Tennessee." "Tay-nay-say WHOO?" "Tennessee is played at Wimbledon." Nope, you haven't missed anything; that, I'm sad to say, is the punchline.

The United States has given the world a rich legacy of comedic talent - Mark Twain, James Thurber, Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, to name but a few. It seems astonishing that, with all the billions they've made from iPods, iMacs and all their other gadgets, the Apple people can't afford to employ a decent gag-writer.

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