When I was a kid, mom would send us out to play in the rain and mudpuddles out front of the house by the driveway. We would toss in sticks, dead leaves, stones into the water as if the result would be different. The stones would sink, and the sticks and leaves would catch in the spiky yellow grass like a fly in a web.
Our world was tiny but our imaginations were large. We learned by doing, seeing the consequences of our actions. Then we would throw our imagination into our play. The water was a sea. The leaf was a boat. The stick was a whale and the stone a meteor from the sky.
When my kids were small, we wouldn't let them play in the rain, or with dirty sticks and leaves. We wouldn't let them feel what it was like to get their rainboot stuck in the mud or hear the sucking sound they created as they tugged their tiny foot up. We denied them the sudden separation of their foot from their warm boot and the splash of white sock into grainy wet sucky muck.
We let our kids play with the newest technology tools. They needed to be competitive. They learned the way the technology trained them. When you push this key, that page pulls up. Every time. This leads to this, then that, every time. We wanted them to develop their analytical minds. They weren't afraid of the next generation phone, tablet, video console, computer.
Our brains are wired differently from our childrens. Our experiences built our brains, neuron upon neuron, synapse upon synapse. We share the same template, but not the same thought processes. And yet we are the ones who provided this clean, precise, neat world.
What have we created?
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/26/new-digital-dementia-plaguing-young-tech-users/
BTW, if you write science fiction this is the science that can be a fiction theme. (this is a blog about books, right?)
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