The Children of Cyberspace: Old Fogies by Their 20s
January 13th, 2010After recoiling in horror as I read the New York Times piece below, I started to wonder…
Is the command line interface the solution to this… phenomenon?
And things like BASIC, LOGO and Zork? If using the machines from the command line doesn’t make the kids want to go run around outside a little more, at least they won’t turn into Twitbook zombies by the time they’re ten.
Via: New York Times:
One obvious result is that younger generations are going to have some very peculiar and unique expectations about the world. My friend’s 3-year-old, for example, has become so accustomed to her father’s multitouch iPhone screen that she approaches laptops by swiping her fingers across the screen, expecting a reaction.
And after my 4-year-old niece received the very hot Zhou-Zhou pet hamster for Christmas, I pointed out that the toy was essentially a robot, with some basic obstacle avoidance skills. She replied matter-of-factly: “It’s not a robot. It’s a pet.”
…
Children my daughter’s age are also more likely to have some relaxed notions about privacy. The idea of a phone or any other device that is persistently aware of its location and screams out its geographic coordinates, even if only to friends, might seem spooky to older age groups.
But the newest batch of Internet users and cellphone owners will find these geo-intelligent tools to be entirely second nature, and may even come to expect all software and hardware to operate in this way.
Here is where corporations can start licking their chops. My daughter and her peers will never be “off the grid.” And they may come to expect that stores will emanate discounts as they walk by them, and that friends can be tracked down anywhere.
“If it’s something you grow up with, you have a completely different comfort with it than someone who has had to unlearn something about the world,” said Mr. Rainie, of the Pew project.
Which is why it is so hard to disabuse children brainwashed with religion at an early age, not to mention nazism and communism. What are American children brainwashed with? Consumerism. Oh, they say its a technological communications revolution to change the world unutterably forever and ever. Really? Well, it looks to me that the town crier spreading the local gossip has not changed a bit. He just has a cell phone and a Facebook account, making sharks in Silicon Valley and Manhattan rich. Some revolution.