Gamers = Wasted Youth

San Francisco is hosting the Game Developers Conference at Moscone Center this week.  As I pass the crowd on the way home I hear an interesting interview that inspires me to write this blog.

Gamers = Wasted Youth

Kids slouched into bean bag chairs locked in dark rooms for hours playing video games, eating cheese pizza and drinking Jolt Cola….  Many young adults continuing this trend past their high school graduation into their college years.  Wasted Youth some might say…not so.

Gamers of the online game Foldit solved an AIDS puzzle in 10 days, the same puzzle has plagued the minds of AIDS researchers for years.  As a collective group gamers worked online after reading an easy to understand primer on amino acids.  Well funded, highly-educated researchers used super computers.  The online gamers used standard home-based gaming equipment and a program called Foldit.  Researchers at the University of Washington realized that human collaboration and a network of computers would solve the problem so they designed an online game to move their project forward onto the path of  finding a cure. 

The gaming community is now turning up the steam on helping to find a cure to cancer and Alzheimer’s disease using the same network and techniques.    

As I get older and face my eventual mortality I have to root for the gaming community and their resolve to cure us all one thumb press at a time.

Who Knew?  Here have another Jolt!

(though not new news it was worth rediscovering and highlighting this)