Opus 2025-110: Shower Thought: Toys or Tools

This is a thought I wrote down 10 years ago.   Different generations view technology in different ways.  My generation looks at the computer as a tool.  It is an extension of the pen, the typewriter.  It is something to get work done.  It has the secondary value of entertainment but it is primarily a tool.  

For my children technology is a toy that can be used for work.  They reject work so it is vain to try to think that technology will solve the problems of education.  When the toy becomes a tool, it is rejected.  That is why they emphasize education being fun.  It isn’t that you learn complex concepts by playing a game.  It is the reality that they are too lazy to learn anything if it takes effort.  I remember the first time the school I was teaching at spent a lot of money on a computer room that was called a “reading lab.”  Hardware and software cost a bundle but it was supposed to encourage learning to read.  Every teacher took classes in on a regular schedule.  The problem was that after the kids had seen the cute cartoon figures dancing at their progress once, the bordom set in.  There is only so many dance routines a programer can come up with.  What no one wanted to acknowledge was that the longer the kids went to the lab the lower their reading scores got.

My grandchildren will look at computers as just a normal part of life.  The chip will replace skills.  If the economy continues to fund the electronics, life will be good.  If we ever are forced to making marks on paper again then the learning curve will have to start from a petrified state.

As us fossils like to say, “Technology is wonderful...when it works.”

homo unius libri