Podcast Appearances

I've mentioned before that I enjoy listening to podcasts -- especially game industry and design focused ones. I've even entertained the thought of getting into it myself, though not much became of that for a while. But eventually it led to The Argument Hour with Seth and TC. We've only done two episodes so far, and then my schedule went a little bit awry when my baby was born.

Not too long ago, I hit the podcast circuit to promote TMG's upcoming 10th anniversary, and the accompanying kickstarter for Homesteaders 10th Anniversary Edition and the New Beginnings expansion. And I've been invited on a few other podcasts in the past as well. Here's a list of all of them, mostly so I can find and share them easily. Feel free to have a listen and enjoy them!

On Board Games: The Argument Hour

With Seth and TC

I mentioned that TC and I have done 2 episodes of The Argument Hour:

5/07/18: In the first Argument Hour, TC and I threw down about "the Alpha Player problem," and I explained a distinction I see between 2 types of cooperative games. Afterwards we talked about Kingdomino, how it works, and the types of people who may or may not enjoy it.

6/07/18: In the second Argument Hour, TC and I got into it about different forms of "going back to the well" -- iterating on a design, honing the mechanisms, and standing on the shoulders of giants, vs lazy rehashing, or downright plagiarism. Afterwards we went over The Voyages of Marco Polo.

On 10/5/18 TC and I took a bit of a break when my son Corbin was born, but we just recorded a 3rd episode about the use of mechanics that rely on loss aversion in games, such as loans, and we mentioned a related (?) topic, scoring leftovers at the end of a game. We ran out of time to do a game review, so we skipped it this time. I'm not sure when that one will air, hopefully I'll remember to come back and link it when it does.
(podcast went live 12/3/18)

On 10/17/18 we recorded another episode about cognitive load, spurred by this blog post by Jeff Warrender. We ran long again, and couldn't really decide on a game to review, so we skipped that segment again. Since I haven't really been playing many games lately, we might just reserve the review segment until we actually have something we'd like to talk about.
(podcast went live 2/18/19)

The TMG Podcast

With Lance Myxter

I've actually been on The TMG Podcast several times:

5/26/17: On episode 003 I joined Lance to talk about How I got into game design, about several of my early designs, and about what led to founding TMG

6/30/17: On Episode 007 I joined Lance again to talk about the Origins convention, testing out new games, and my latest creation (that was on Kickstarter at the time), Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done.

10/27/17: On my third sit-down with Lance, we discussed Essen 2017 releases in general, and TMG's offerings: Exodus Fleet, Harvest, and Pioneer Days, with a few detours to discuss some of TMG's older games as well.

4/13/18: I was on the podcast one more time ahead of the kickstarter project for Homesteaders 10th Anniversary Edition, as well as the New Beginnings expansion. We talked about the beginnings of TMG, as well as plans for TMG's 10th anniversary, such as the revival of our launch titles, Homesteaders, and my game Terra Prime, which is coming back as Eminent Domain Origins. I also explained Ultimate Frisbee to Lance, who seemed to confuse it with disc golf :)

10/5/18: I came back on the podcast to talk about game development in general, but specifically about Belfort, as the kickstarter for the Belfort reprint (with the Expansion expansion and a brand new expansion) was ongoing.

10/8/18: Tasty Take #1: Since Halloween is coming up. Lance asked me if I like scary movies, and if so, which is my favorite.

10/10/18: Tasty Take #2: I talked about playing Eminent Domain and Dice Forge on BoardGameArena.com


And speaking of TMG's 10th anniversary...

TMG 10th Anniversary Promotion

I got myself invited onto a handful of podcasts to promote the 10th anniversary of TMG, and the launch of the 10th anniversary edition of Homesteaders. Here are those appearances:

Hooked On Geek

With Greg Dixon and Stephanie 

4/23/18: In episode 17 of Hooked on Geek, I talked to Greg Dixon and Meeple Lady about everything from how I got into gaming and the game industry, to my engineering background and how that relates to game design and development, to the few published games I've been able to play lately (Bunny Kingdom, Santa Maria), to TMG's 10th anniversary.

Who, What, Why

With Mike Bonet

4/22/18: Season 19, episode 1 of the Who, What, Why podcast began with me reminiscing about the biggest disappointment of my game design career thus far, a Three Musketeers themed game called All For One that I worked on with the original designer David Brain, and how that game basically launched my career as a game developer, and shaped the process I use to develop games. We talked a little about my game design blog, some of my design articles (such as the one on game end dynamics), and about the upcoming reboot of Terra Prime as Eminent Domain Origins

The Brawling Brothers

With Josh and Brandon

5/1/18: For a short segment in the middle of episode 72, the Brawling Brothers took a break from talking about The Grimm Forest and IPs in board games to talk to me about TMG and the Homesteaders 10th anniversary edition / expansion kickstarter.

The State of Games

With Chris Kirkman, Darrel Louder, and TC Petty 

5/1/18: This was a long one, and we covered a lot of miscellaneous topics, but the meat of the podcast was about special, deluxe, or limited editions of games. Also, TC explains why everyone should just enjoy Avengers: Infinity War rather than be critical about it.

The Good, the Board, and the Ugly

With Joe Sallen and T.C. 

5/2/18: After Joe reviewed Eminent Domain and Oblivion, I explained some of the background thinking behind both the base game and the new expansion. I also told some of my favorite amusing stories about the game, and I described my Eminent Domain Legacy tournament format.

What I'm Playing Now Podcast

With Joe Leuzzi

5/6/18: Joe interviewed me on some more obscure history, including my thoughts on role playing games, the 30+ hour holiday game marathons I used to host, and the first real game I worked on: All For One, and another of my prototypes: Alter Ego. The topic of Ultimate Frisbee came up, and I explained the challenges I see with trying to capture the feel of a sport in a tabletop game. And of course I promoted Homesteaders, New Beginnings, and Terra Prime / Eminent Domain Origins.

Go Forth and Game

With Tom Gurganus 

5/18/18: I talked with Tom a little bit about the upcoming TMG titles I was working on at the time (Embark, Old West Empresario), as well as the history of Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (and a little about the expansion I was working on at the time). Then we talked about the difference between game design and game development, and due to lack of specificity in the term "developer," I proposed a new term to replace it: "gamegineer." Next, I explained my philosophy that games ought to stand up to competitive play -- not all games are meant to, but all things being equal, a game is only better if it DOES hold up to competitive play. And finally, I offered some tips for pitching to publishers, and ran down a few of the games I'm working on (Alter Ego, Riders of the Pony Express, Automatown, Deities and Demigods, and the next TMG project I'm working on: Back To Earth)

Views From The Outer Rim

With Clive Lovett 

5/21/18: Views from the Outer Rim is less a gaming podcast and more of a Sci-Fi/Fantasy podcast. I knew Clive from back in my BGDF chat days, and he invited me on to talk about my sci-fi themed games. I ended up talking about a wide variety of things on that podcast!

Older podcast appearances

Breaking Into Board Games

With Gil Hova, Ian Zang, and Tony Miller 

12/30/15: Gil, Ian, and Tony asked me about how I broke into the industry, specifically into game development.

Board Games Insider - Interview

With Ignacy Trzewik 

9/21/16: Ignacy interviewed me for a special interview series, and we talked about the difference between new and novel mechanisms, and refined versions of existing ones. I got my first chance to mention Crusaders at the end, which had only just been green lit at the time.

Board Game Design Lab

With Gabe Barrett 

6/28/17: Gabe asked me some questions about ways to take a game from good to great.

Board Game Design Lab - Bonus Round

With Gabe Barrett 

6/30/17: Gabe and I discussed the value of playing games more than once each, both as a player, and as a designer.

On Board Games

With Isaac Shalev 

9/18/17: Isaac and I discussed a proposed entry into the game designer glossary he's putting together: Fragility in games (and the opposite, which would be "robust"). We discussed some older/classic games such as Puerto Rico, Princes of Florence, Container, and A Few Acres of Snow, as well as more contemporary titles such as Hanabi, Pandemic, Dominion, and others. Isaac prompted me to talk about an instance where I, as a developer, removed a source of fragility from Scoville, and we also talked about what we can do as designers to add or avoid fragility in our games.

Let's Level Up

With Rick 

2/2/14: Rick asked me about my creative process, and what TMG had planned for 2014 (and beyond).

A Dash of Science

With Chris Birkinbine 

9/5/17: Chris had me on his not-game-centered podcast to talk about "the science of game design," creating and developing board games.

Wurfel Reviews interview on YouTube

With Alina

10/20/16: Alina prompted me with interview questions (she did her homework!) about the difference between design and development, kickstarter and what games are suitable for it, and my upcoming games.

Meeple Nation

With Ryan, Brent, and Nathan 

4/27/16: The Meeple Nation guys interviewed Michael, Andy, at SaltCon 2016, which began with me talking about my upcoming games: the plan to revamp Terra Prime as Eminent Domain Origins, and my next non-Eminent Domain related game, Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done.

4/28/15: This SaltCon 2015 interview went into detail about Eminent Domain and the at-the-time upcoming expansion, Exotica.

I, Geek podcast

With Mark and Sten 

11/29/15: At BGGcon 2015, I sat down with Mark and Sten to talk everything gaming... from what gateway game got me into the hobby, to inspirations for games I've designed, to a sneak peak at the games I was developing at the time.

Legends of Tabletop on YouTube

With John Haremza

7/28/17: In the summer of 2017, I was on the Legends of Tabletop to talk about my upcoming game, Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done, which was on kickstarter at the time.

Legends of Tabletop on YouTube

With John Haremza on YouTube

11/01/16: [watch again]

Arizona Public Media

11/29/15: A public radio station interviewed Karen Arnold Ewing and I about Rincon 2016, the game convention I started up in 2012. That was the last year I was the convention chair before handing the reins over to Karen and her husband Tony, who have made the convention bigger and better than I ever did!

Written interviews

Go Forth And Game

With Tom Gurganus 

10/11/17: Tom got me talking about publishing Deluxified games, designing games in general, and specifically about upcoming EmDo content.

Go Forth And Game

With Tom Gurganus 

4/1/14: Tom interviewed Michael and I about 5 years of TMG.

Dice Hate Me / Go Forth And Game

With Tom Gurganus 

12/14/11: Tom, in conjunction with Dice Hate Me Games, interviewed me way back in 2011 about design advice, how different parts of Eminent Domain came to pass, what it was like to be on kickstarter (at the time it was less ubiquitous), and what other games I was working on, both for TMG and my own designs.

Go Play Listen

With Chris Marling 

12/19/16: Chris does a series of Q&A interviews called Designer's Dozen, where he'll ask a designer a dozen questions about designers they admire, the best and worst aspects of designing, tips, and other miscellaneous design related stuff. 

Monthly Progress Report For My Twitch Channel, FuzzyJCats, Nov 25 Through Dec 24

Twitch Channel FuzzyJCats

During this month of streaming, I continued to work on improving the usual chatting and gaming at the same time, and not using filler words, though I noticed I constantly slip into using a lot of filler words as they help to fill dead air.

I was also trying to find out how we can tell if we're entertaining. Certainly watching your VoDs help you notice if you're articulate or not, if you move around too much such that you're off the facecam, but I still can't tell if my streams are entertaining.

However, I started having an inkling as to what's entertaining to viewers this month. Since the entertainment is in real-time, and people are chatting, like with everything, people find you very interesting if you ask about them and talk about their issues. This is try-hard but cbenni.com can let you review your logs so you can remember what your viewers say, so when they show up the next time, you can ask them about that specific thing. 

For instance, if they mention that they're starting a new job, you can ask them how work is coming along, if they like their new boss, coworkers, and so on and so forth.

So another try-hard method is after each stream, I have been more or less writing these topics to talk about when the viewer shows up next.

Again, this is very try-hard, but it can help not only make your chat more entertaining for specific viewers, but with these topics on hand, it will help reduce dead air.

Aside from the usual goal of chat and gaming ratio, working on dead air, and removing filler words while streaming, improvements to be made is to be more aware of my viewers so I can ask them about issues next stream. 

The How of Happiness Review

Interview With Wizardz Bluff Developers; Developing After A Failed Crowdfunding Campaign

Developing a board game and getting it to market can be fun, exciting, and work. Along the way there are setbacks to be dealt with. Issues arise that might not be a setback, but also have to be understood. Because of all the different things that can happen, it's good when you can learn from the adventures of others. They might not have gone through exactly what you're dealing with, but having a little more insight on the general picture helps you keep moving forward.

At SaltCon (web page) 2018 I met the developers of Wizardz Bluff. At that convention, they were showing their game with the plan to launch it on Kickstarter soon thereafter. Their game was good. But it was lacking the zing that would send them into the market. (Here is a link to my initial review.)

I met Jayson and Ron Smith again, after the attempt on Kickstarter, at the end of summer event and again at SaltCon's 2019 Main event. Both times they were demonstrating a new version of Wizardz Bluff. They were making it better and getting it ready for market. They have a much better game now. But the journey of how they got to where they are is interesting and informative.

I had separate discussions with Jayson and Ron at the last SaltCon event to talk about the journey they've had. Here's what came out of it. How they got through the highs and the lows. And, how their experience may help others get a game to market.

We talked about three main questions after the Kickstarter campaign didn't succeed: what were some of the challenges they faced, what were some of the benefits/rewards they found, and what takeaway lessons did they learn?

Challenges

The biggest challenge mentioned was the loss of faith in what they had created. When you have close friends and family telling how great your idea is, expectations grow. When those hopes aren't met with the same enthusiasm when you present your idea to a greater populace, it rips at your confidence.

It doesn't just hit your self-confidence. Here was a team of developers—two people who had put a lot of work into their project. They were questioning how they worked together and how the business side was being handled. They even questioned if they had a legitimate game to begin with.

They took a break and came back to work on Wizardz Bluff. Both mentioned a break was needed to allow a clearing of thought so they could return. They may not have had a better understanding of what they were doing, but of what they wanted to accomplish. They returned to the core of the game they had started and worked forward, again. They also took it upon themselves to listen more, to each other and the players who had tried out the game. As they worked with new ideas, they were more open to making changes, giving up ideas they each personally held close, and listened.

Benefit/Rewards

By returning to their original theme of Wizardz Bluff they recaptured their original feeling and excitement. They deconstructed what they had done for the first version and analyzed how each component of the game they had added affected play for better or worse. This allowed them to determine what the best parts of the game were, keep them, and improve on the overall idea.

They worked on developing ideas that added to their defined core of their game. They learned what people found exciting about the game and kept that feeling in the forefront of their continued development process. This led to a second and then a third revision. A current revision that is getting a better response from the people who are playing Wizardz Bluff at conventions.

By building on the core elements they have streamlined their game to play faster and better.

Lessons

In terms of developing their game, the biggest lesson both of them mentioned was listening. Listening to each other, to those who were close and had played the game many times, and to those who weren't as invested in the development. Once they seriously took into account what was being said after demonstrating the game, they were able to make changes to create improvements instead of reinforcing what they already believed. Egos were still involved, but they were taking a step back and creating a game players want.

In running their crowdfunding campaign, they agreed they started before they were ready. Neither the game, nor them. The two went together, even if they didn't see it the first time around. By not having the game at the level it is now, the excitement was contained within a limited group. That group was mostly their initial core supporters. After restarting their efforts, they learned that having the game right was leading to more support and buzz in a larger community.

Final Thoughts

The latest version of Wizardz Bluff is a better game. Before it was for a family with younger players, now it has broader appeal.

Crowdsourcing is a numbers game. A base of supporters is needed who is interested enough to back your project and to talk about it. Not everyone will do this. You need to plan on having greater numbers of contacts than you need to back your project by probably a factor of 10. To get the numbers you need to have a solid project or a good track record of previous successes.

A failed funding campaign is not the end. There is a reason you are developing your game. Don't give up on it. Dig in and build on what you've already put into it. Analyze what works and create something better. Share that concept and keep improving it as you get more and more people interested in the project. Keep those who have given you contact information up to date about what you're doing. Keep adding to that list of people as you prepare for to launch the project again.

Jayson and Ron (Gold Cauldron Games—Facebook page) have a game worth owning. They made it that way because they didn't roll over and call it quits. I look forward to seeing how it goes for them and their project.

If you have a comment, suggestion, or critique please leave a comment here or send an email to guildmastergaming@gmail.com.

You can also join Guild Master Gaming on Facebook and Twitter(@GuildMstrGmng).

Zombie Army Trilogy [Includes Update 5 + MULTi9 Languages] For PC [7.2 GB] Highly Compressed Repack

Zombie Army Trilogy - is a third-person tactical shooter stealth game developed and published by Rebellion Developments. It is a spin-off to the Sniper Elite series, released on March 6, 2015 for Microsoft Windows.

Featuring: The epic cult horror shooter series comes to an apocalyptic conclusion with an epic new third chapter, a heart-pumping new horde mode, and remastered editions of the best-selling Nazi Zombie Army 1 & 2.  In the dying flames of World War II, Hitler has unleashed one final, unholy gamble - a legion of undead super soldiers that threatens to overwhelm the whole of Europe and fight alone or team up to save humanity from the zombie menace in this apocalyptic third-person shooter!  Download this video game for free.

..:: Purchase the game here and support the developers ::..

1. FEATURES OF THE GAME

• Experience the awesome three nerveshredding campaigns across fifteen missions of intense third-person action.
• Ultimate horror and Face your fears in the brutal new Horde Mode for 1-4 players, across 5 blood-Curdling maps.
• In this video game, shred the undead with genre-best rifle ballistics, powerful firearms and deadly explosive traps.
• Perfect your gameplay style and carnage with customisable loadouts pick your favourite weapons and explosives.
• Defeat harrowing zombie legions, Chainsaw-wielding Elites and worse, before facing the Demonic Führer himself.

Game is updated to latest version

2. GAMEPLAY AND SCREENSHOTS

3. DOWNLOAD GAME:

♢ Click or choose only one button below to download this game.
♢ You need μTorrent program to download torrent files, download here.
♢ View detailed instructions for downloading and installing the game here.
♢ Use 7-Zip to extract RAR, ZIP and ISO files. Install PowerISO to mount ISO files.

ZOMBIE ARMY TRILOGY [INCLUDES UPDATED 5 + MULTi9] - DOWNLOAD LINKS

      

PASSWORD FOR THE GAME

Unlock with password: pcgamesrealm

4. INSTRUCTIONS FOR THIS GAME

➤ Download the game by clicking on the button link provided above.

➤ Download the game on the host site and turn off your Antivirus or Windows Defender to avoid errors.

➤ When the download process is finished, locate or go to that file.

➤ Open and extract the file by using 7-Zip, and run the installer as admin then install the game on your PC.

➤ Once the installation is complete, run the game's exe as admin and you can now play the game.

➤ Congratulations! You can now play this game for free on your PC.

➤ Note: If you like this video game, please buy it and support the developers of this game.

Turn off or temporarily disable your Antivirus or Windows Defender to avoid false positive detections.

5. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
(Your PC must at least have the equivalent or higher specs in order to run this game.)

• Operating System: Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10
• Processor: Dual-core with SSE3 Intel Pentium D 3GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200
• Memory: at least 2GB System RAM
• Hard Disk Space: 15GB free HDD Space
• Video Card: DirectX 10.0 compatible graphics card with 512 MB (ATI Radeon HD 5870)

Supported Language: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese (Simplified).
If you have any questions or encountered broken links, please do not hesitate to comment below. :D

Global Game Jam 2018 @ KSU

The Global Game Jam 2018 @ KSU will be held from Friday, January 26th through Sunday, January 28th. 

This is a great opportunity to come and make a game over a weekend. Anyone can join in regardless of skill or experience. Come and have fun, learn, and meet some new people.

Come to the J/Atrium building (Marietta campus). Driving directions and a campus map is available at http://www.kennesaw.edu/maps/docs/marietta_printable_campus_map.pdf and http://www.kennesaw.edu/directionsparking.php 


You will also need to register 
https://epay.kennesaw.edu/C20923_ustores/web/classic/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=2015

The registration desk will be on Level 2 of J-Block at 2:00 pm. 

The opening ceremonies will take place in Q-202 and will start at 4:30 pm. The jam will take place in J-Block and will start at 6:00 pm on Friday January 26, 2019.

This is an 18 Plus event. If you are not 18 or older, you will not be able to participate. 

I

WHITE & LIGHT WOOD KITCHEN + DOWNLOAD + TOUR + CC CREATORS | The Sims 4 |

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Are Computers Still A Bicycle For The Mind?

Steve Jobs had an enormous appreciation for the computer, believing it was the greatest human invention, and he commonly likened it to a bicycle for our minds. Here he is in one such explanation of this analogy:

He refined his delivery over the years, but the underlying analogy was always the same. The bicycle dramatically increases the efficiency of human locomotion, and likewise the computer dramatically increases the efficiency of human thought. While that is still the case when computers, the Internet, and increasingly Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are used as tools to leverage our innate abilities to solve huge, complex problems, they can also become other things for the mind that are not so useful. We are seeing it happen more and more that as computers proliferate, shrink in size, and become more convenient and ubiquitous, they stop being treated as a tool and start being treated as a toy or simply as a distraction. Maybe computers are becoming less like a bicycle for the mind and more like something else.

For decades the computer has been an essential tool for transforming and advancing our civilization. We use computers for nearly everything we build and do now: manufacturing, design, construction, finance, banking, communication, supply chain management, retail, medicine, research, exploration, and on and on. We use computers to design and develop newer and faster computers—a profound use for a tool—and we've been using them in this way since they were first capable of doing the job. It's the ultimate tool that can be used to make anything more advanced, even itself. The computer is the driving force behind its own exponential improvement. That characteristic makes it unique among all of the technological tools we've invented.

As computers have gotten more powerful, we have also designed them to be smaller and more capable to the point where now we can carry around a supercomputer in our pocket that is always connected to even more powerful supercomputers in the cloud. This supercomputer can run for hours on a small battery and connect us to nearly the entirety of human knowledge with a touch of the screen. Having such an incredibly powerful tool at our fingertips should enable us to do amazingly advanced things, and in most cases it does.

However, the smartphone in particular was not designed to create amazing new things, at least in the physical world. Sure, it can definitely be used to create in the virtual world: YouTube videos, Instagram pictures, or stories that can go viral and spread through the Internet in a millisecond, but it isn't normally used to design and build real new things like the next interplanetary rocket engine or distributed renewable energy system. These tasks are left to its more powerful and capable predecessor—the computer workstation. The smartphone was simply not designed for complex design tasks because it lacks the complex inputs that such tasks require. It was designed for something else.

The smartphone was designed to hold our attention. Maybe not at first. The first smartphones needed to serve a useful purpose to justify their existence and sale to a willing consumer. Being able to take a quick picture, check your email, or look up the nearest restaurant while away from your desktop computer was a reasonable value proposition for a lot of people (or holding your entire music collection, that was a major selling point for the original iPhone). Those first entries in useful, need-fulfilling apps quickly expanded into a sea of attention grabbing apps and features that are constantly vying for our attention with notifications, badge app icons, and never-ending feeds.

Holding as many people's attention for as long and as often as possible is definitely the name of the game for smartphones now. The companies that have figured out how to do this best have grown the largest with Apple, Google, and Facebook at the top of the list. Amazon is right up there, too, but they deal as much in selling physical goods and providing the computing infrastructure that most other companies use to build their businesses as they do in providing entertainment. Twitter would be up there as well, if they could only figure out how to monetize their users' attention as effectively as the other companies do.

Where does all of this attention seeking get us? We're not using this feat of human ingenuity to create even more useful things. We're using it to burn our time playing simple repetitive games with in-app purchases, trolling other people on Twitter, and reading all about the latest scandals and horrible fear-inducing news on our Facebook news feeds. We've even reached the point where journalists routinely write entire news articles about what people said and how other people responded on Twitter. Who had the best burn? Who made the best meme? How is this news?! This civilization advancing technology, this bicycle for the mind is no longer being used to take us to new places. We're now using it to go in circles, just wasting time, without making any progress. We've created a technology carousel.

We haven't just created and unleashed this time-wasting carousel, we can't get off of it. We keep going round and round, checking notifications, scrolling feeds, and searching and searching and searching. We're searching for approval if friends and acquaintances liked our post. We're searching for responses to DMs. We're searching for that next inspiring post or cute pet pic. Studies are showing that the average person now spends two hours a day on social media (careful, it seems like a spammy website, and of course I couldn't find the actual source). A report from Morgan Stanley in The Atlantic says that "depending on which study you choose to look at, adults on average check their smartphones as many as 80 or even 200 times each day." According to a report on a study in The Washington Post, teens are on different forms of media for nearly nine hours a day, including online music and videos.

The number of hours taken from our lives and handed over to social media companies for advertising dollars is simply astonishing. We trade our precious time for the next dopamine hit again and again because we're addicted to the artificial sense of connection we feel when we send and receive these virtual messages out over the ether. We're not making real connections with other human beings, though. We're making stronger connections with our phones, which is exactly what was intended to happen by design. We may try to convince ourselves that all of this checking and searching is accomplishing something important or filling a need, but most of the time what we're accomplishing for ourselves is further isolation and distraction.

We are succeeding in reducing our attention span and destroying our ability to focus. If we're obsessively needing to check our phone every few minutes, that doesn't leave much mental capacity for deep, creative thought. As Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains describes, our mental functions end up fragmented and shallow, and we're unable to follow complex lines of thought to more innovative solutions to our problems. When we can no longer function without our phones, they may not be just a technology carousel, but a technology crutch that we depend on to hold us up.

One would think that with all of the talk about how quickly technology is advancing, and how we're all walking around with supercomputers in our pockets, we would be having a cultural renaissance. One would expect that with that kind of technical leverage, productivity would be accelerating through the roof, but that's not what we're seeing. The following plot shows total factor productivity in the US up to 2014.

Productivity clearly stalled out in the 70s and picked up again in the 80s and 90s, but it is definitely decelerating again in the 2000s. Unfortunately, we can't see what has happened in the last four years in this graph, but what we do see is still disconcerting. The 2000s and beyond should have seen accelerating productivity, according to the technology evangelists, because that's when computers really came into their own and smartphones and apps started penetrating the market and eating the world.

I'm not claiming that smartphones and social media are the cause of this productivity slowdown. I'm not an economist, and even the experts don't seem to have a great handle on why this is happening. But these newest technology entrants certainly aren't helping productivity, and there are a number of reasons why that may be, beyond distracting us with the technology carousel.

First, digital recording technologies—embodied in many ways by a smartphone—seem to be replacing our memories. In another report in The Atlantic going by the provocative title Is Technology Making Us Dumb?, studies show that if you record something, whether by audio, images, or video, you remember it less. Beyond recording our memories instead of remembering them, we have become better at finding information, but worse at retaining it because Google is just a click away. We don't have to remember how to do things anymore. We can just look it up whenever we need to, so as soon as we've accomplished whatever goal we had, the information is jettisoned and we get back on the carousel.

That behavior of always looking things up also has another side effect. We practice skills less. Without sufficient practice, we can't develop fundamental skills into more complex problem-solving abilities. So many useful skills are of the use-it-or-lose-it variety, and always looking things up instead of practicing has the nasty side effect of losing it. Google Maps is a great example. Before Google Maps we needed to do route-planning and navigation with an actual map. Even folding up the map after using it was its own problem solving exercise. Now we just follow the directions fed to us from the Google Assistant in the phone stuck to the dashboard. That Atlantic article had some great words on this subject specifically:

Using your GPS for all navigation is also damaging to your brain. A series of studies showed that people who rely on GPS to get around have less activity in the hippocampus, an area of the brain involved in both memory and navigation, than those who use maps and learn to navigate based on landscape indicators. Your spatial memory develops far less when you are on GPS autopilot than when you need to observe what is around you to determine where you are going and how to get back.

GPS is certainly easy and convenient, but it's not doing us any favors in the mental health department. After using navigation for a few months, most people will be lost without it. It quickly becomes a technological crutch.

Google Assistant is gaining new abilities every year, too. Now it can be your personal secretary, making appointments and ordering food for you, as seen at Google I/O:

This AI performance is incredibly cool, no denying it, but what is it taking away from us? Will we start losing the skill of human interaction as these AIs do more and more of these types of things for us? People are already horrible to each other on Twitter and Facebook because they've stopped appreciating that there's another human being on the other end of the conversation instead of boxes of black and white text. How is Google Assistant going to change our culture as we interact with less and less different people on a daily basis?

Driving is another skill that we probably won't be commonly doing in the near future. Of course, I, as much as anyone, look forward to the day my car can drive itself because it's so boring and tedious and humans have consistently shown how bad they are at it, but we should still acknowledge what we're giving up. Even though traffic deaths would be significantly reduced, driving is a reasonably complex task, and if we're not doing that, what are we replacing it with? Another spin on the carousel?

The problem here is that a small fraction of people are permanently solving the problems that we used to routinely solve for ourselves everyday. Then they package it up in an AI and distribute it to everyone, so we no longer have to solve that problem on a daily basis. Each individual problem may seem trivial, but they all add up. As Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa gain more skills, we stop using those same skills, and we lose them. We become dependent on the AI crutch.

We're making such progress on solving all of these tedious day-to-day problems that people have started making solutions for problems that don't even exist. Case in point: Bitcoin. Digital currencies and the blockchain are solutions looking for a problem and coming up short. They don't seem to solve any pressing problem that isn't already solved with the existing monetary system, unless you're a drug dealer or financial speculator. They do, however, consume an inordinate amount of electricity.

Instead of putting more energy and effort into solved problems or finding more ways to distract and entertain everyone, we should look at some of the most pressing problems and exploratory frontiers staring us in the face. We could be developing renewable energy systems much more rapidly than we are. We could be pouring resources into educating the world's population and elevating it out of poverty. We could be building advanced space probes, spaceships, and telescopes to explore the universe and learn more about how it all works. There are incredibly challenging and fascinating problems all around us. Just take a look at drawdown.org for a list of problems that need solving to combat the existential threat of global warming.

New, advanced technologies can play an essential role in solving all of these problems and more. Using the vast computer power at our disposal to make progress towards solutions in these spaces would truly be using the computer as a bicycle. With all of the time we're freeing up by offloading those tedious tasks to our digital assistants, we should have plenty of time and creative energy to tackle the real, complex problems ahead of us. If we could only redirect all of the energy and attention we're spending on using computers as a carousel or a crutch, we could get back on that bike and go somewhere.