IPad Apps and Eagle Cam

The Grass App is deceptive.  Its fun to play with for the first few moments, and the gentle waving of the virtual blades of grass inspire a feeling of calm, but then it just starts to feel pointless and frustrating- it won’t hold any shape you try to draw.  It tries to create the illusion of naturalness, but there’s still too much structure.  The randomized pattern is still a pattern and looks the same on everyone’s screen.  After staring at it for more than a minute, it stopped looking like grass and more like a bunch of grass green lines.  I think it represents our attempts to control our interactions with nature.  The game makes us feel like we can move the grass however we want, and tries to make us feel like we are really surrounded by grass, that it’s under our fingers and we’re in control of it, but in the end none of it is real.  I’d much prefer to go outside and sit on real grass myself, even if I can’t control it the way I can in the app.   
Guru meditation
The setting didn’t draw me in, but I felt like that was the point of the bare desert and the few clouds and the lack of detail: to make us feel peaceful, but not focused on the screen.  Instead, once we have the ipad level and are sitting comfortably, we are stuck in one place, sitting still, with nothing to keep our minds occupied.  This is a game that actually kind of promotes letting your mind wander, the same way certain types of meditation do, while testing how long you can sit still without fidgeting.  It’s a weird concept for an app because it makes us quit focusing on the ipad and just take some time to think, or at least concentrate on what our body is doing rather than on the machine in our hands.  And yet our temporary escape from the draw of the ipad is still dependent on an app, so we do have to devote a small portion of our concentration to the device in our hands.   The app gives the illusion of a forced escape from technology, but that escape is dependent on technology.  Of course, the app could also be manipulated and turned into a game of how many things you can do (moving, walking, etc) without losing, but either way it’s a game entirely focused on using the player’s body, not their mind.  The sounds the game makes are very annoying though, and the position of your fingers holding the ipad makes it very uncomfortable, becomes distracting, and takes away from the experience. 
Decorah Eagle cam 
The value of the eagle cam, or any nest cam, is that it presents the birds as they are, no commentary, or editing, so each person is free to draw their own conclusions, and is also unable to overlook any “evil” that happens on screen.  It’s presented as simply a window into nature, showing exactly what happens, with no editing, so if one of the parents brings back someone’s cat to feed its young, or if one of the chicks kills its siblings, we will see it and have to accept that that there is no malicious intent, it’s just nature.  However, I wonder if it is really a good idea to invade the eagles’ nest year after year.  All the attention means more and more people will be inclined to seek their nest and other eagle nests out, because the eagle cam makes them feel so close to the eagles, without truly allowing them to realize how powerful the birds are, and they may want to get just as close in the real world.