Children in the Digital Age, The Role of Entertainment Technology in Children's Development.
by Sandra L. Calvert, Amy B. Jordan, Rodney R. Cocking.
ISBN: 978-0275976521
Folk singers and novelists have spent thousands of hours in the past writing or singing about the concept of change. Buddhist teachings highlight those aspects of present moments that are transient, part of a continuum of impermanence. The world of economics and business falls within this realm of the present moment, and with the advent of digital technology late in the twentieth century, has allowed for a complete change in the way we think about and interact with each other. For the culmination project of the digital age, the television and the computer have begun their fusion into a single entity; the world of on demand, interactive programming, as well as computers that record, broadcast, or play movies or personalized videos are already upon us. The dawn of the digital age has allowed children access to information like no other generation before them. Pause, rewind, or slow down live television, c’mon, what could be cooler than that? …but do these technological innovations come without a price? The book that is being recommended here attempts to answer some of the questions regarding the psychological evolution of the development of children as the changing media frames or packages up the world that surrounds them. Of course, this book will become outdated as human life becomes more digitally enhanced, but the social, cognitive, familial, and consumerist conclusions that the scholars who have compiled this book, document a changing world like the one those folk singers, novelists, and Buddhists describe. The ideas presented in this book will continue to evolve through further discussion as technological innovations continue to shape the generations of the world in the future.
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Personalizing your living space is something that former generations are familiar with, but younger generations have found themselves operating not only in a physical world, but also in a digital one as well. The revolution that began with how we watch television is just the beginning of a larger pattern of a change in thinking that is beginning to make its way into many people’s lives. MySpace, iGoogle, iPhone, TiVo, these are but a taste of the larger sea that makes up the digital world.
The dream of meshing the television and the computer together into one single information portal complete with its own marketing and advertising schedule is virtually upon us. Right now, there are several ways that we gather information, all of them about equally environmentally impactful. For example, magazines and newspapers require feedstocks of wood pulp to make into paper, while television and computers require copious amounts of fossil fuels to be burned in order to power and cool their data centers. Some time in the near future, though, the television and the computer will join together seamlessly to create the virtual, digital world that we are seeing glimpses of today.
Once data became digitalized at the turn of the century, people and businesses began realizing the enormous opportunities involved in combining the two most powerful technologies into one data source. The power of the television to influence behavior was obvious back in the 1950's when television was first introduced to the American public. The computer shows signs of surpassing television's influence after advent of internet, and companies like Google are already cashing in on the economic possibilities.
How to combine the television and the computer is still something that is being worked out, though. I’m sure you can go out and purchase a television that will run HDTV as well as the internet; I’m quite sure that you can even get it so that the television has the picture-in-picture feature so that you can watch MLB or NFL in high definition while you search the web in a small box in the upper left corner and get some ‘work’ done. I am also sure that you can purchase a laser pointer remote control so that you can do all of this from the living room couch.
Putting the television onto the internet is a bit more complicated than the other way around simply due to the physical laws associated with mobility. Generally, televisions are stationary while laptops are carried around. The wireless circuitry that is needed to transmit live streaming data, at present, can become overloaded with high volume and make the transmission choppy and render the technology useless. Therefore, it only makes sense that the internet will be coming to a television near you sometime in the near future.
This will open up a whole new set of possibilities for children to learn before, during, and after school. After-school programming will take on a whole new meaning. To make the internet and all of its contents as easy as Saturday morning cartoons to access will undeniably create a shift in the way young people learn to think about the availability of information.
The whole concept of the internet as we know it is really only less than ten years old right now. It is based upon an open collaborative model. This guiding philosophy is well suited to allow for exponential growth, so it is understandable that people generally overestimate the age of the internet or the sheer volume of its content.
Still, in less than a decade, after experiencing the volumes of information and the ease of social networking on the information highway, more and more people make accommodations to join the internet community every day. Until recently, these new internet citizens have been mostly from developed nations, but international education and economic programs are beginning to see the potential of adding the knowledge bases of the cultures in the physical world to the data resources that make up the virtual world.
Hopefully, the initial child psychology models are correct in pointing out that the computer and cognitive development go hand-in-hand because these educational and economic programs are starting to give children access to information like they have never experienced before.
One particular organization is making the effort to put a laptop computer in the hand of every child in the world. They are starting by reaching out to the younger generations in underprivileged countries in an effort to shed light on some of the injustices going on there, and hopefully, the increased voice and attention will bring some alleviation to the suffering there. By offering people a portal to global information, we are giving them an opportunity to be included in the effort to help improve the overall quality of life for the entire human species. In America, this kind of technology is reaching its maturity through its fusion with the television. In other, less technologically advanced regions of the world, people are being offered the internet in all of its simplicity for the first time.
There is no doubt that access to information improves people’s lives, but sociologists are just beginning to figure out how all of these different forms of media affect a child’s social development. Some side-effects of technology include obesity, short attention spans, hyperactivity, apathy, anti-social behavior…just to name a few. Of course, the list of positive effects from access to information far outweighs the negativity. There is an important question, though, that is beginning to be asked about the spread of technology across the planet, and that is, what are the consequences? ...but can we obtain the answer to this question without first spreading technology across the planet to collect the information?
A computer offers a child an opportunity to learn and puts them in a collaborative community that willingly shares all information free of charge (minus the initial sign-up fee). Communicating information indirectly, that is, where children have the opportunity to sway horizontally through a topic is a method that is received better than when information is passed along using the direct approach. Direct instruction definitely has its place, but generally, not on the internet, which offers its viewers a more passive learning system that avails itself to passing thoughts and inquiries quite freely and easily.
When children are able to create multiple learning experiences around a topic, it is said, they will master the information in such a way that they will be able to teach it to others. By allowing children the opportunity to pursue topics that capture their interest, they will be able to see patterns in their learning, and ultimately, they will learn the process of learning. Once this happens, children can grow up into independent adults capable of relying upon their own learning skills to solve problems.
Following this logic then, the computer and internet television are gateways to world peace; funny, but true. Of course, as television stands now, the model doesn't work; television is still too direct, but free-flowing, passive information streams are the portal to peace. Rather than having to resort to physical violence, citizens can become informed through communication channels on various topics presented through a multitude of formats, and methods of collaboration will have already been opened and established in an attempt to vocalize the desires and demands of the opposing parties. We will be living in a more sane world because of the internet and a computer; who would have ever thought it possible?
This is the potential of technology, but, of course, the danger on the internet for children lurks around every corner. Unsupervised internet sessions for children have the potential to turn out to be traumatic experiences that point to leading lives of reckless abandon. Do the benefits of the technology outweigh the costs?
One thing for certain is that the answer to that question does not matter much in the business models of the world’s most powerful economists. The worlds of business and economics are moving full-steam into a future that is powered by technology and where data is digitalized and transmitted virtually instantaneously across the planet. Whether or not putting a computer in the hands of every person on the planet is actually good for the planet, the simple fact of the matter is that we are doing it.
One organization on the forefront of this movement is called the One Laptop per Child program. This program offers affordable laptops to children in developing nations. The idea behind the concept of giving one laptop to every child is that information in some of the more underdeveloped regions of the world will be able to be shared more freely between local and global citizens alike. This not only creates a learning opportunity for the children, but also allows people of privilege an opportunity to get involved in some of the regions of the world where economic advancement is not an option.
The XO laptop was created to be mass distributed under the principle that children have an innate capacity to learn and solve problems, if and only if, they are given enough information to make measured decisions with real consequences. Without adequate information, children learn to withdraw from decisive moments and pursue lives of apathy. The theory states that when given adequate learning opportunities, children will share and create solutions to problems together. The XO laptop seems to have been created to help facilitate this goal.
Experts are beginning to agree that the answers to some of today’s toughest problems will be developed in this new kind of collaborative environment that establishes itself in online communities. With all of the momentum that collaborative communities have already created, it is hard to believe that the idea of collaboration won’t become the wave of the future. By not only globalizing the marketplace, but also the stream of information, it is only a matter of time before more collaborative software is designed into the computer, and many of our aggressive borders are drawn down.
The XO laptop tries to approach this pure collaborative model. It is not a commercial product in the traditional sense of the word; it costs $100 and is often gifted to poorer nations from people who are living lives of privilege in more developed nations. The design of the XO was built around some of the more pressing concerns with computers these days, the major ones being the ones that are showing up in India and China in the phenomenon that is coming to be known as the 'eWaste Crisis'.
The XO tries to address some of these issues by offering a longer battery life and a product that is half the size and weight of a regular laptop computer. Each computer automatically picks up other XOs within range and automatically sets up a network. All computers hook into the internet through satellite connection and have no harmful chemicals hidden in their components. The XO is powered by solar and a manual wind-up crank. When a user is finished with the XO, the program has factored the costs of a recycling take back program into the design so that resources are recycled back into new products.
As more children begin using the internet as their window into the world, more and more creative problem-solving will begin to manifest itself…this is the plan. One thing for certain is that there are no longer children ‘in remote regions of the globe’ or people ‘on the other side of the world’, rather, we will begin to see ourselves as individuals with equal potential, who, when exposed to a world of ideas will contribute more to their local communities through collaboration and information sharing than they will through competition and intellectual property rights.
The XO laptop program is, of course, more that just an idealized view of the digital age; it is a training tool to another whole new generation of thinkers. The philosophy of competition and unregulated markets has been entrenched into the American psyche for the past century. The twenty-first century is being billed as the information age, and collaboration is turning out to be a much more efficient and profitable method of communication than economic competition ever dreamed of becomming.
Whether the future of international economic relations is guided fundamentally by a competition model or a collaborative model does not necessarily matter because the spread of the internet has shown the human species a tool that is more powerful than the marketplace…that is, the free, uncensored spread of ideas. Even if all of the markets of the world disappeared, humans would find a way to communicate freely with each other. Technology is affording us this opportunity in our evolutionary history to communicate freely with virtually every citizen of the globe with the strike of a mouse.
The current collaborative models highlighted by the XO laptop model give an interesting glimpse of the future global trend in relation to overall computer use. As more and more countries go online, some estimate it to be over one billion new users in the next decade, innovations will travel around the world at the speed of light. As more and more innovative solutions are shared, the change in the way people think becomes more a part of the mainstream.. Over time, this change over to collaborative principles will enter the business arena, and the days of competition, inefficiency, overuse, and wastefulness will be studied for what they are...mistakes of the past!
_____________________web recommendation
One Laptop per Child
www.laptop.org
The mission statement of the One Laptop per Child program is "to create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning". The project's origins go back more than four decades, taking so long to go from radical theory to reality because it first had to prove the immense power of the personal computer as a learning tool for children before it was allowed to mass market its product to children around the globe.
