I am not one of those who lie awake at night worrying about the effect that gaming violence may have on our nation's youth. At the same time, I'm also not in any hurry to set up my kids with their own consoles so they can start launching rocket grenades hither and yon.

But the day is undoubtedly coming soon when the No. 1 Christmas wish is going to be a box that will allow my kids to sit in front of the TV and become 007 or Aragorn or Lara Croft. And with each minute that goes by, that computer-mediated experience is becoming more engrossing, even as the cross-fertilization between marketing message and narrative storyline becomes more seamless, in every medium. How far are we from the plot of Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game," in which the kid who thinks he's playing games is actually waging war against aliens? "America's Army" is supposed to be a recruiting tool, but doesn't that seem like an inefficient waste of resources? Who needs to enlist? Just log on and go fight.

Likewise, I'm finding myself feeling increasingly archaic as I read my kids "The Hobbit" before putting them to sleep. I read the book over and over again as a kid. But won't my kids rather play the video game version instead? Which is liable to get more adrenaline going: wielding your sword Sting against the giant spiders in Mirkwood in real time on the big screen in the living room, or passively reading about Bilbo doing it on the static pages of a musty paperback?

I will concede that I was able to read and play Dungeons & Dragons as a teenager, and I'm hoping that there will still be some room for the written word and fleshly experience in my children's lives, even if they do become citizens of Xbox Nation. But I also know that the sophistication of the consumer entertainment products that confront today's kids trump anything that I had to face, by multiple orders of magnitude.

I used to think, as the son of a critic who was reviewing television shows more than three decades ago, that the best way to prepare my kids for their media future was not by sheltering them from the storm, but by exposing them to it while providing informed annotation. I was very, very proud when my daughter came to me once, confused by a car commercial she had been watching: "Daddy," she said plaintively, "I can't figure out what they want me to buy."

But now I'm not so sure that my strategy is going to have the desired effect. I feel as though I'm up against the Balrog with a Swiss Army knife. In the 21st century, our entertainment elves have gotten so good at what they do that the commercial is the entertainment -- and the game isn't just the movie but also the front page of the New York Times. The scene of those soldiers laughing in a tent in Afghanistan, or wherever, having just fragged some 14-year-olds, is chilling. It mixes pro-war propaganda with Toys "R" Us seduction as smoothly as Rocket Boy, in "Rocket Power," rides a railing on his skateboard. We will buy the games, play the games, and then be the games.

What do they want us to buy? The question becomes ever more complex, and the answer ever more fluid, as entertainment -- games and movies and books and music -- blends into one digital soup, reflecting all experience. Pop that disc into the player, and be all you can be. Inoculating ourselves against that future is going to be tougher than beating Sauron -- even if you've got every gadget that James Bond ever dreamed of and a magic ring, to boot.

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