The occasion was a birthday party for a one year old. The older children had escaped to the bedroom, as we always did when we were young. Here they avoid the ‘OO’s’ and ‘RR’s’ of indulgent adults delighted by the smiling happy baby boy in the main part of the house.
I called at the bedroom door, knocked, sought permission and took this photograph. It stuck me later how it told a story about the changing nature of children’s play.
Each child has a tablet, a game, a problem to solve and maybe a score to beat. Delighted at achievements on the screen, calling out levels of success, here are focused minds moving ever on to some other plain of reality. Fingers press and slide, eyes monitor and decisions are made in rapid time. There is no place to daydream, no time to reflect, engagement is total and engrossing.
The substance is always two dimensional rather than three. The dexterity of digits is the only physical requirement. The pearly gates of cyber-space allow reality and fantasy to mix like a time before the Enlightenment when mythical creatures in a nearby forest were as real to people as the gargoyles on a building buttress. No longer the limitations of a problem to be solved through building a bridge out of pieces of a Meccano set. No longer the use of spanner and screwdriver to make the moving parts function. No longer a moving part on a partly constructed object upon a bedroom floor; instead all is only in the mind and on the screen.
No longer are the dimensions of space and time in the hands of the child, these now are under the game programmer’s control. But, perhaps there is less division of play objects into boys and girls stuff, although I’m not sure about that.
So can we expect perhaps quicker minds but less manual dexterity? What, I wonder does this mean for imagination and the shaping of the future?
What was Meccano?
A children’s modelconstruction kit invented by Frank Hornby. It consisted of re-usable metal strips, plates, angle girders, wheels, axles and gears, with nuts and bolts to connect the pieces. It enabled the building of working models and mechanical devices and was popular in the 1950’s and 1960’s, mainly among young boys.
I called at the bedroom door, knocked, sought permission and took this photograph. It stuck me later how it told a story about the changing nature of children’s play.
Each child has a tablet, a game, a problem to solve and maybe a score to beat. Delighted at achievements on the screen, calling out levels of success, here are focused minds moving ever on to some other plain of reality. Fingers press and slide, eyes monitor and decisions are made in rapid time. There is no place to daydream, no time to reflect, engagement is total and engrossing.
The substance is always two dimensional rather than three. The dexterity of digits is the only physical requirement. The pearly gates of cyber-space allow reality and fantasy to mix like a time before the Enlightenment when mythical creatures in a nearby forest were as real to people as the gargoyles on a building buttress. No longer the limitations of a problem to be solved through building a bridge out of pieces of a Meccano set. No longer the use of spanner and screwdriver to make the moving parts function. No longer a moving part on a partly constructed object upon a bedroom floor; instead all is only in the mind and on the screen.
No longer are the dimensions of space and time in the hands of the child, these now are under the game programmer’s control. But, perhaps there is less division of play objects into boys and girls stuff, although I’m not sure about that.
So can we expect perhaps quicker minds but less manual dexterity? What, I wonder does this mean for imagination and the shaping of the future?
What was Meccano?
A children’s modelconstruction kit invented by Frank Hornby. It consisted of re-usable metal strips, plates, angle girders, wheels, axles and gears, with nuts and bolts to connect the pieces. It enabled the building of working models and mechanical devices and was popular in the 1950’s and 1960’s, mainly among young boys.