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Thursday, March 27, 2014

2048

Any New Trier student or teacher would recognize the 4x4 box shown to the left. These boxes are the staple of the newest smash iPhone game 2048. The goal of the game is to match like numbers to create bigger numbers using addition. The game is finished when you add two 1024 boxes together, to make a 2048 box. The game is lost when you fill up the board with numbers, but no viable moves are available.

Unlike the other popular iPhone games this year (including but not limited to Dear Hunter, Flappy Bird, and Candy Crush) this game uses mathematics and strategy. Many people, like author Amanda Rush, believe that the over-dependence on our smart phones is actually dumbing us down. With so many people completely reliant on their smart phones, they have much less use for their brain. The rest of her article can be found here.

Are these smart phones turning us into dumb people? Will a time come when one must choose between their own brain and Siri? Maybe Gabriele Cirulli, the inventor of the game made it to stop this craze, and make smart phones make people smarter. The 19 year-old Italian web designer finally did the impossible: made kids addicted to math. One can only hope there are more games like 2048 in our future, and less like Flappy bird.

1 comment:

Carolyn D. said...

I disagree with what Rush said about smart-phones making us dumb. I think that these devices can be used in many different ways, and while we may over use them, which can take time away from other studies, it is not the phones themselves that are causing us to not focus on more educational things. I also think that this brings up an interesting point in what it means to be educated and smart. While smart phones may not be helping us memorize formulas for an upcoming math test, having news at our fingertips can educate us in many other ways. Games like 2048, as well as news and other productive apps, actually can make us smarter in my opinion.