I want my MTV! Have you played Atari today?
My MTV and my Atari 2600 made for lasting childhood memories during the Summer of 1983!
While my time outdoors was spent with friends riding bikes and playing baseball from sunup ‘til sundown, my time indoors consisted of watching hours of MTV and playing Atari until late at night…
I want my MTV! The music videos that played prominently and frequently on MTV made a lasting impact on me. They helped me discover my own musical tastes and develop a broader aural palate…
“In addition to my steady diet of Hard Rock and Metal (the latter of which my parents were not particularly fond of), along with occasional bites of synth-driven Pop and New Wave, I had a growing appetite for Hip-Hop.”
“…There’s a big world out there; our music and songs, much like cooking and cuisine, have the power to bring us all together at life’s dinner table, even if only for a little while.”
- Woodard, Anthony. “There’s a big world out there, and remember, when one door closes, another opens... (Repost)”. Feb. 8, 2023
Interesting… Did playing Atari 2600 and other video/arcade games improve our eye-hand coordination and fine motor skills?
Perhaps…
“Griffith and colleagues published the first finding demonstrating individuals with video-game experience outperforming those with no video-game experience. They reported superior performance by VGPs on a rotary pursuit task, suggesting they possessed enhanced hand-eye coordination (Griffith et al., 1983)…”
“Orosy-Fildes and Allan (1989) tested participants on a simple color discrimination task and found that participants who played a video-game on the Atari 2600 system responded significantly faster than those who did not play video games…”
Latham AJ, Patston LL, Tippett LJ. The virtual brain: 30 years of video-game play and cognitive abilities. Front Psychol. 2013 Sep 13;4:629. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00629. PMID: 24062712; PMCID: PMC3772618.
Copyright Activision. Source: wikipedia.org
Copyright Activision. Source: wikipedia.org
I remember earning fabric patches for achieving high scores on several Activision games, including these three titles… Not to be outdone, my late father achieved a perfect score on Pitfall II: Lost Caverns in 1984.
Activision Keystone Kapers
Activision Enduro
Activision Pitfall
Source: digitpress.com
“Whether it’s riding a bicycle, throwing a football, lifting weights, typing a report, or playing scales on a guitar, given enough repetition and practice, we eventually are able to complete such tasks without thinking about them. This is known as “muscle memory”. At its core, muscle memory is essentially, process-driven.
Similarly, processes are everywhere, and are especially important in operational areas, areas that are of an urgent or time-sensitive nature and must be completed with a high-degree of accuracy. Whether it is when someone enters millions of dollars’ worth of stock trades, lands a commercial airliner filled with hundreds of passengers, or administers anesthesia throughout a surgery, there is no room for hesitation, no room for error. The proper behavior (mind) and action (body) (together, process) must be second nature. Practice makes perfect. That being said, being that absolute or true perfection is generally unattainable, we should commit to a journey of continuous improvement (through learning and more practice).
Procedural memory, including muscle memory, is also a key component to successful improvisation, a skill that acclaimed, multi-Grammy-award-winning Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, who happened to grow up only a few miles away from me and the local music store I frequented, regularly demonstrates.”
- Woodard, Anthony. “Muscle Memory...”. Mar. 2, 2023
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