Once upon a time there was a boy named Giorgio.
Giorgio loved anything that had to do with electronics, technology and these kinds of things.
One evening Giorgio was sad. He had just left his worst play date ever!
While riding the bus back home he was going through the day. Alberto had invited him for a play date, once they entered his apartment he had turned on his favorite video game and had played for the entire time.
During the whole 2 hours Alberto had played, and played, stopped a minute to get a snack, and then played more. Leaving Giorgio completely alone.
Giorgio was feeling sad and betrayed. But most of all Giorgio was trying to figure out how to prevent this from happening in the future.
“That was it!” Giorgio thought just before getting off the bus. “If we had played with the video game just for a short time and then played something else … that would have been a good play date”.
But then Giorgio also remembered all the times in which he had started playing a video game and how difficult it was to stop once you got into it. “If only the game it self stopped after a bit, that would be better.” Giorgio thought.
As soon as he got home he started working on this new project. A video game that could find out when the player had played too much of it!
The first stage, the planning stage, was harder than Giorgio imagined. He could not figure out how it was possible for a machine to know if someone had played too much.
Giorgio was thinking: “Someday 10 minutes might be too much, but other days 20 minutes could be just fine, it depends by what you did earlier in the day, and by many other things … I can’t just build a timer, I need something that can tell when it’s too much.”
“What was Alberto doing differently after playing too much?”
“His face was a bit different …” Giorgio thought “But I can’t point out exactly how different.”
“Maybe he had played too much when I asked him if I could drink the juice I found in his fridge, but he didn’t even noticed I talked with him.”
Giorgio settled on this concept, the machine would stop the game when the person playing was not able to realize what was going on around.
Finally he could actually start building it.
Giorgio gathered a bunch of stuff and after a few hours he emerged with a shoe box with a glove sticking out of it. The glove was kept in the shape of a hand with a pointed finger. When it was time the finger would push the off button on the game.
The next day Giorgio invited Alberto for a play date. “Yeah, we can play video games all afternoon!” said Alberto. “Maybe not all afternoon” said Giorgio with a smile.
As soon as they got home Alberto asked to play with Giorgio’s videogames. With a smile Giorgio said. “No problem” And he let his friend play.
Alberto started playing and he really got into it after a bit, but suddenly a buzz sound came from a show box near the video game. A hand came out of it and turned off the video game.
Alberto was stupefied! “What happened?” He asked. “What was that?”
“It’s time to play something else.” Said Giorgio.
“What do you mean, ‘something else’?”
Then Giorgio explained what was that shoebox about and why he built it.
“I’m sorry I didn’t pay any attention to you during our last play date.” Said Alberto. “I got too much into the game.”
“But now, tell me …” Alberto continued. “What other kids of machines like that can you make?”
The two boys spent the rest of the afternoon making and building fantastic machines together.
That was the best play date ever.