The Children of Cyberspace
My 2-year-old daughter surprised me recently with two words: “Daddy’s book.” She was holding my Kindle electronic reader.
Here is a child only beginning to talk, revealing that the seeds of the next generation gap have already been planted. She has identified the Kindle as a substitute for words printed on physical pages. I own the device and am still not completely sold on the idea.
My daughter’s worldview and life will be shaped in very deliberate ways by technologies like the Kindle and the new magical high-tech gadgets coming out this year — Google’s Nexus One phone and Apple’s impending tablet among them. She’ll know nothing other than a world with digital books, Skype video chats with faraway relatives, and toddler-friendly video games on the iPhone. She’ll see the world a lot differently from her parents.
Fascinating article from Brad Stone stating that, quite simply, the unflagging rate of tech advancement is creating mini generation gaps whereby these mini-generations can be identified and grouped by what technology they grow up with during formative years. Makes perfect sense, because more than once I’ve observed that young kids today are familiar with an iPhone in a way that kids of eight years ago are not. My son, now 5, tries to touch, swipe and pinch the screen of every mobile phone he comes across. Eight years ago, kids would have been introduced to a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile phone or something from Nokia and then introduced to an iPhone.
Another thing I think about: what will tech look like when my son is 16? How many disruptive technologies will come down and displace the things that, by today’s standards, are considered contemporary?
And perhaps the biggest question of all: speaking from psychological, cognitive, sociological and developmental perspectives, what long-term effect will all this technology, replete with its ‘information anywhere’ capability, have on people? Today, we see all sorts of psychopharmaceutical drugs aimed at what we now consider mainstream psychological conditions: anxiety, ADHD, depression. It’s interesting — and not just a little scary — to consider what we’ll be ‘treating’ 15 years from now as a result of people being overstimulated, forced to multitask beyond what the human mind can reasonably do (some argue we’re there already) and rely on technology for everything: information, answers, directions, social consensus, morality.
Even as a tech geek, I reel sometimes. As a guy who used to read a book a week but now struggles to get through one a month (most of my reading is web reading, which, arguably, is more convenient due to its more fragmented nature), I wonder where this is all going.
I know — I think I’ll check out a Kindle. If, of course, the Apple tablet disappoints. Then — yes, then — I’ll get back to reading at a tyrannosaurid rate. Right?
