In late 1981, a new standup arcade game grabbed everyone’s attention (and quarters). Frogger wasn’t a clone of Space Invaders or Asteroids—instead of an alien world, it took place in an urban landscape, where you were a frog just trying to make it to the top of the screen.
There were two stages of each level of the game. First, you had to dodge cars while you tried to get to the other side of the road. Then, you could catch a breather in a median of sorts, before you had to try to get to the other side of a river.
Here, the rules were very different. In fact, they were inverted: while the road meant safety and touching a moving car meant death, you had to jump onto logs (or onto the backs of turtles) to survive, and touching the water meant death.
This part of Frogger is exactly what comes to mind when I think about today’s landscape. We humans are the frogs trying to keep up with fast-moving trends, trying not to end up in the water of stagnation.
In the 19th century, we saw machines doing things only humans could have done before, and this phenomenon required a whole new outlook on work. This whole new set of skills was one log to jump onto. You needed to understand a bit about how machines worked if you wanted to stay relevant—or employed.
If you lived somewhere without electricity, this was another log to jump onto as the world turned itself on. If you already knew about machines, you were on a moving log, and this made the jump to the faster log of electrification.
Here is where my Frogger analogy needs an addendum: these aren’t arbitrary logs you encounter, but instead, they get faster and faster as you try to get to the other side.
In the late 90s, office workers learned that they had better start using computers, or they would get left behind. This was certainly a fast-moving log they could jump onto, because they were already cruising down the river pretty quickly on the electrified, industrialized log.
By the early 2000s, it was time to start understanding the internet in the corporate world: another log, faster than the PC log you were already on. You needed to wait a sec, figure out the timing, and then take that leap only once you were at least a little familiar with computers.
Today’s fast-moving log is very clearly AI. This is true for anyone who works at an office, but it’s also true for the rest of us. That’s because this is changing everyone’s lives, just as surely as the industrial revolution did the same thing about 200 years ago.
Starting to use AI tools is considerably easier if you’ve been on the internet for a while, but if you’ve never worked on a computer, it’s easy to imagine why this might never happen. Today, this fast-moving log we’re on helps us stay relevant and informed. Is it possible to just stop on a log and never take that next jump?
Not in Frogger, no. If you stay on a log, you get carried off the side of the screen, where you die. What about in real life? I’m really not sure, but some people are definitely going to try.
Is there any further I can take this painful analogy? Challenge accepted!
In Frogger, there’s a road where the rules are inverted. Only once you reach that median and take a little pause do you begin your perilous log-jumping journey.
That’s because the road isn’t like the river, and cars aren’t like logs. I can’t help but draw this into a cautionary metaphor for the beginning of life. Here, the fast-moving things are to be avoided at all cost.
Leaping onto technological trends before you have a foundational knowledge of what those trends represent is a terrible idea. Learning to think slowly is crucial, and it’s tough to do that if the logs are going by at a million miles an hour. That’s why it’s good to have a little bit of a slower start in life, slowly learning our ABCs before learning to write.
Now, here’s where I do just a tiny bit of cognitive offloading, dear reader: what should the median symbolize? There’s an obvious place in between phase one and phase two of the game where the nature of the game completely changes. Take this one in any direction you’d like today; I’m all ears.
I’ve been avoiding AI and spending time wondering if I’m just gonna sit this one out and/or worrying I’ll be 70 and in the dark technologically. I’d like to think that’s what grandkids are for?? Given I have no grandkids yet and the resistance to always provide tech help by the ones responsible for my future grandkids, I doubt the wisdom of this plan. On another note, I’ve recently purchased two arcade games for a game room. I searched for Frogger but couldn’t find one anywhere 😟. Has he become road kill?? I’m concerned.
Frogger was among the very first video games I played. Now, I can get almost any new AI model to code up a Frogger clone with a single prompt. There's probably some deeper point to make here.