^TagMind Matters podcast

What was the precursor for the widespread tech addiction we see today, particularly in young people? Many say it was the iPhone. Peter Tonguette, however, thinks that the game Tetris started the screentime avalanche. Tonguette reviewed the new Apple TV+ film Tetris, which covers the story of the classic game’s development, acquisition, and subsequent popularity in the early nineties. He writes, One might assume this changeover coincided with the rise of smartphones and social media, but a new movie shows that it happened as early as the summer vacation of 1989. During that fateful interregnum between school years, kids were introduced to something that prefigured the electronic devices of the 21st century: a battery-powered, 8-bit handheld videogame device whose two Read More ›