Civilization began around 4,000 to 3,000 BC with the Egyptians and Sumerians. As a completely new concept there was a lot of trial and error and in 1996 the investment in civilization seemed to finally pay off with the release of the Tamagotchi. Before 1996 there was no way to test the goodness of a generation. Things like “help thy neighbor” seemed like a good benchmark to gauge virtue but the test is tainted by the reward of going to heaven. The Tamagotchi put you in complete control of a digital creature in which you chose to take care of or not with no personal repercussions.
Finally, there was a true test of character. People could be judged based on how they treated their Tamagotchi.
You are judged on a couple different factors while raising a Tamagotchi. It has a happy meter, hunger meter, bracelet meter and discipline. Most of these meters are self-explanatory. Hunger meter, feed it. Discipline meter, assert authority, happy meter, inject it with dopamine and serotonin, and the bracelet meter I have no idea and don’t really have the time to look it up with my deadline looming.
I’m assuming everyone in the world except me grew up with a Tamagotchi and so 6,000 years after the creation of civilization we learned how to be the caretakers of our own Eden.
So how do we know Tamagotchis changed the world for the better? Simple. We credit every major technological breakthrough after 1996 to the invention of the Tamagotchi assuming each of these inventors probably learned how to care of another being by caring for their Tamagotchi.
In 2016 Harvard scientists discovered aerosols that could repair the ozone layer and cool the planet.
The environmental entrepreneur Boyan Slat has created a technology that retrieves plastic from the ocean. In 2019 it has successfully taken plastic out of the great plastic island of the pacific ocean.
In 2018 David Vaughan accidentally discovered a new method to regrow coral reefs 40 times faster than before. A huge first step to repairing the coral reefs throughout the entire world.
Flying drones are being programmed and specifically tailored to plant trees. This process will allow for the quick and efficient planting of entire forests.
Massive filter structures are being built that suck the CO2 right out of the atmosphere and as of 2018 have seen massive reductions in cost to operate as they become more and more financially feasible.
The growth of the meat substitute industry has seen huge strides in the last ten years creating plant-based proteins that look and taste like real meat. Over the next couple decades this will save thousands of animals.
Tamagotchi even led to the biggest and most popular monster catching video game franchise of all time: Digimon. In Digimon you catch pocket sized monsters and force them to fight and the monsters like you more for it.
Each and everyone of these creators, based on my lack of research raised a Tamagotchi and is most likely still raising one to this day. Just like the Grinch, their heart grew three sizes that day. But unlike the Grinch they were starting with normal size hearts not little size hearts so this growth increase led to much more exponential caring and nurturing.
In science, a good way to fully understand something is to break it and put it back together. This seems to be our strategy with Earth. With vigilance and understanding we’re learning how to repair our planet and more importantly we’re learning how to terraform other planets to make them habitable for humans. All of this because of Aki’s Maita’s invention the Tamagotchi which won her the IG Nobel Prize for Economics which I feel is more important than winning an actual Nobel Prize. Once we learn how to fully fix our planet the next step is terraforming Mars for human colonization. Mars should no longer be named after the Roman God of War but rather after the healing hand that will soon give life to barren rock: Tamagachi-land.