Jupiter Research’s David Card must’ve woken up on the wrong side of the bed yesterday. How else to explain his grumpy smackdown of Steven Johnson’s profile of Spore in yesterday’s New York Times?

OK, so maybe some of the more utopian fantasies of Will Wright and Brian Eno are fair game for parody - I’m certainly sure that I’d never want my kids to be part of an educational system where videogames are part of the core curriculum. If you watch how kids interact with games, you’ll see them primarily relying on instinct. This may set Malcom Gladwell’s heart a-fluttering, but I think that also erodes deep critical thinking skills at the exact time they should be evolving.

But Card goes on to say “Studying videogames in a larger context is useful for UI/man-machine interaction, for immersive entertainment, and for non-linear storytelling. Not much else.” Really? What’s undeniable is that Spore represents some major advancements in how games are engineered, creating what might be termed a “biology engine” that has the same type of law-based properties as the long-sought “physics engines.” And if we’re able to fully replicate the properties of the real world, Card can’t see anything game-changing (sorry for the pun) about that? The impact on science, medicine and computing would be profound.

Card finishes by saying “Why doesn’t Johnson look at some real 21st century youth communication patterns, like IM, texting, or MySpace? I’d read that.” Right. Because MySpace and social networking haven’t been written about at all.

And besides, Spore looks like it could be kick-ass fun.