Billy Millionaire: the Olympic opener

London 2012 has just taken another decision. Danny Boyle and Stephen Daldry have been handed the reins of creation for the Olympics' opening ceremony.

Both directors have form. Danny Boyle's biggest success was the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire; Stephen Daldry was the creative force behind Billy Elliot.

So what can we expect? Something new, or a hybrid of previous projects: Indian boy makes good in his quest to be a Bollywood dancer?

Whatever results will be very different and presumably less expensive than the opening to the Beijing 2008 Olympics.


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Olympic dash to trash mascots

The case for the prosecution: the internet art-hackers have already struck.

The case for the defence: previous Games avatars have had an airing.

The rush to lampoon Wenlock and Mandeville is no bad thing: the mascots have struck a chord, and will presumably any time soon be guest-appearance in a new episode of The Simpsons.


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Real Virtuality on the curriculum

An antidote to people's media sensitisation towards violence is been tried with success in Merseyside schools by the charity Support After Murder and Manslaughter (SAMM).

Young children are being shown stills from videogame franchise Grand Theft Auto and 'Itchy & Scratchy' from The Simpsons in the context of comparing violent images with what is going on in their own lives. Images are marked as 'bad real life', 'good real life' and 'not real'.

And the result? Kids are realising that comic-book violence is not real; in life acts and behaviours have consequences. And they report being disgusted by the stills.

Perhaps there is hope in clawing back civil society from the clutches of glamourised, depersonalised media violence.


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Kill Willy?

Newsflash to SeaWorld: orcas are wild animals, so are not 100 per cent predictable.

The death of Dawn Brancheau in Orlando, Florida has put killer whale shows on hold. SeaWorld immediate response? To transfer Tilikum, the offending animal, to another theme park.

How about retiring performing animals unless their living conditions are re-assessed? Animals are not really placed on earth simply to entertain humans.

Minx stink: parental furore over web game

My Minx makes the case for the licence fee. How so, I predict you'll be asking?

Market forces mean that girls of 7 upwards have been flocking to the designer-style web game to create fashion-icon avatars on the pull and on the pill complete with lowest-common denominator must-have accessories:

• Racist character stereotypes. Check.
• Tasteless storyline threads. Check
• Inappropriate sexual content. Check.
• Pushing parental boundaries. Check.

Blighty Arts, the producers of the game. say My Minx is 'harmless, tongue-in-cheek entertainment'; but they can't even spell the name of their products (sic, 'My Minix') despite all the glitz of their user-interface design.

The relentless push for eyeballs means content gets dragged to the gutter in an unregulated market. Hence the internet and the likes of Fox TV can dream up grotesque virtual and reality freak shows with impunity from regulators.

The licence-fee arrangements in the UK enshrine public-taste standards, which at least keeps some of the wildest ideas off our screens. A constant barrage of tasteless programming eventually become boring, so it always needs to recruit new viewers and participants; hence the relentless, deliberate content pitched at children.

This is the media content equivalent of the drug pusher, and it isn't a pretty sight. The logical extension of such forces to give the mob want they want is ever more graphic sex and violence aimed at progressively younger audiences. This vision of society celebrates a regression to a pre-Enlightenment, violent past.

But perhaps, as the internet is so pervasive, the gloves are already off when it comes to content: at least until the next swing of the pendulum that attempts to impose a moral framework on a feral, free-for-all society where anything goes ... and frequently does.

Virtual games people play

Any coolhunter out there who predicted the rise of virtual gaming is pretty hot right now. Farmville is harvesting fans, Sorority Life is perpetual freshers' week, Pet Society has housetrained thousands and Cafe World ate all the pies. But what's next?

How about MetroMegalomaniac, the game where budding autocratics outvie each other in a race to build architectural kitsch to their own glory, trading points for prime locations, avant garde urban sculptures and demolition gangs to smash rival edifices?

Or Autotopsy, where gamers learn the noble art of forensic pathology on their friends by trial and error, trading points for manuals and apprenticeship sessions with surgeon avatars?

Or Darwin Awards-backed Don't Try This at Home, where points are awarded for ingenious avatar deaths, and trading points buys brainstorming ideas from B-movie clips in a random-generator database.

Social breakdown networking in a neighbourhood near you.