The BBC children’s television programme Teletubbies is, evidently, based upon an SF conceit. But how meaningful is it to call it SF? Whilst conceding science-fictional elements to the show, most viewers, I suppose, would not think of it as belonging to the SF genre. And yet there is a point in making the identification.

The Teletubbies live in Teletubbyland, a sort of hi-tech hobbiton of green fields and hills, dotted with coloured flowers and grazing rabbits, under a bright blue sky. The four Teletubbies themselves live in a sunken dome, tended by technological gadgets of various sorts: a robotic vacuum-cleaner called ‘Nu-nu’ who cleans up all messes, food-producing and other machines, and periscopes that rise spontaneously from the turf to talk or sing to the Teletubbies.

The ’tubbies are differentiated from one another in various ways, and each has a favourite toy or prop. They are, in descending order of size: Tinky-Winky (who is purple, his antenna a triangle shape, his favourite ‘prop’ a handbag); Dipsy (lime green, his antenna a straight-up phallic thrust, his favourite prop an enormous black-and-white top hat); La-La (yellow, her antenna curled like a pig’s tail, her prop a ball); and Po, the littlest of them (red, his antenna a circle, his prop a scooter). The show’s conceit is that these curious space-alien-creatures represent toddlers at different stages of development, such that Tinky-Winky has the greatest (although still severely limited) linguistic capabilities, and Po talks in baby-talk. They are also differentiated in terms of character: they all have racially ‘white’ faces and hands, except for Dipsy who is racially ‘black’ (quite apart from his pimp hat, Dipsy adopts rather patronisingly stereotypical hip-hop dance postures). La-La likes to sing. Po likes to ride around on her scooter. All four of these beings have television screens inset into their bellies: which is, of course, the feature that gives the show its name.

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Growing scientific evidence demonstrates that the human brain dynamically changes in response to experience and to changes in the environment, a phenomenon that is known as “plasticity.” It is also believed that timing is crucial – our brains appear to be more susceptible to change early in our developmental lives. Thus, a world with vastly different technology driven demands, opportunities and challenges, is surely going to lead to brain changes: the brain of our children will be different from those of the generations who rode their bikes, jumped rope, and played sports in the backyard, rather than throwing a football with Madden NFL 09.

There has been increasing interest on the possibility that video games may actually induce brain changes that lead to behavioral benefits. A number of applications of computer games have been developed for education and rehabilitation. At least anecdotally, individuals who have played a lot of video games using joy stick controllers in their youth