We’ve added the Nintendo Wii to spendamillion after many many many fine spendamillion visitors suggested it.

This is the most talked about console since the first Playstation, and it is truly fantastic. Where as Playstation and Xbox new versions have gone all hi-tech graphics engines, blah, blah, blah, Nintendo has kept it simple focusing on usability, and it really works. They gotta success on their handies.

When I first got a Nintendo Gameboy, it was so exciting. Everybody had them and everyone carried them with them wherever they went along with their lunchbox. When I see my childhood friends now (those that had gameboys as kids), 90% of them work in IT and the internet. They are surrounded by laptops and mobile phones, and it seems natural, it doesn’t seem strange to them, to have all these computers orbiting them in their day jobs.

If Gameboy naturalised our generation to accept laptops, mobiles and pda’s as part of daily life, what technologies are being naturalised for the next generation?

Back to the Wii… Anyone, who has played a Wii will love the way the Wii:

1. Involves more physical actions from the users. It’s not just pressing buttons. You have to move your whole arm and the joypad to get a desired action (like stab a baddy, or hit a tennis ball).
2. It’s also more about social games, rather than solely playing shoot-em ups against yourself. Look at Wii Tennis!

You could ask what kind of naturalising effect will these two elements have on our kids for their adult life?

Am pretty sure that at the least our kids will feel more comfortable physically engaging in viritual environments, and engaging physically with remote others in virtual environments.

Hang on a minute though, there aren’t any jobs out there, that require you to physically engage in cyberspace are there? Nor is the typical Windows/SchmOffice PC particularly physical, it’s just tap at a keyboard and twiddle your mouse, isn’t it, no big arm gestures, no jumping up and down?

Today, am not going to predict the future, but l guarantee you that there WILL be the workspace that allows phyiscal engagement with information, and with this, our jobs will be more phyiscal.. but physical communicating via machines… And it will all seem natural. And its all down to the Wii..