Thanks to Russell Arben Fox, I caught this speech by Clay Shirky on how the Internet is reshaping our lives. (Check out the comments at his blog, too.) He speculates we haven’t yet completed adjusted to the world in the Internet age, just as there was a lag time before people learned how to deal with the changes brought on by the Industrial Revolution. Russell summarizes his talk,
I’m dubious about much of the history he invokes, and his math to
calculate just "where do people find the time?" sounds a little
crackpot to me…and yet the whole thing, his imagined evolution of us
from passive tv-watchers to interactive Wikipedia-page-writers,
was brilliantly persuasive. In 15 minutes, he travels from the
wrenching changes of the industrial revolution (and its essential
technology, gin), to the unexpected wealth of the post-WWII world (and
its essential technology, the television sitcom), to the "cognitive
surplus," to Pluto, and beyond. Watch the whole thing to the end, to
make sure you get the somewhat scary (but oh so truthful) story of the
4-year-old and the dvd player.
I’m a little less of a Luddite than Russell, so I’m more easily persuaded by Shirky than he is.
My stories about my kids and technology:
Story One: What’s the first letter of the alphabet that my kids learned? W. Because everything in their world begins with www.
Story Two: Jonah’s first worlds after the regular "mom" and "dad" were the names of the Thomas trains that he learned from playing the Thomas the Tank Engine games online.
Story Three: Before Ian could talk, he could turn on the computer, find a game under the favorites menu, and then play the game.
Story Four: When Ian is upset about something, he’ll often say that he wants "to return to the main menu."
All things considered, I would rather blog, than watch Giligan’s Island.
Apt. 11d 