Today I am writing to let you know that Michael and I have decided to wrap up the (parent.thesis) blog. Writing it for the past ten months has been a wonderful opportunity to explore the issues surrounding family and technology. Blogging for CNET also turned out to be an overwhelming task for us, given that we each already work full-time. So we have found that we cannot sustain a daily conversation in this arena, though we are confident that our experience as CNET bloggers will continue to inform other areas of our work.
I love the serendipity of blogging. You never know exactly which topic will resonate with other people. The (parent.thesis) reaction that surprised me the most was the incredible interest in my post A kids'-eye view of laptop design that I wrote about construction paper laptops created by kids at our local school. After appearing on CNET, The Morning News wrote a feature story about the laptops, the designs made it onto Boing Boing, and have gone around the world since then. Just this week I had a request to reprint one of the designs in the UK Metro newspaper.
The tech community is not always aligned with a parent's-eye view of the world, so I was happy to find that people everywhere were interested to see the features kids came up with when they designed laptops from scratch. Even the most jaded techies found delight in the dedicated "kitten" and "Harry Potter trivia" keys.
So, as we sign off, I leave you with a design by your future tech users, the Mini Laptop Club.
(Credit:
Mini Laptop Club)
Tech has changed our lives in so many ways. Two areas that interest me are our thoughts about knowledge itself, and our experience of solitude.
I used to like the game show Jeopardy and even tried out for it. I flew to Los Angeles for the day and passed the test when my daughter was five months old, proving to myself that my brain hadn't totally gone to mush. I didn't get called to be on the show, but the tryout was still a good experience.
But now, with Google and smart phones, we have all that information at our fingertips, so who cares whether we can memorize facts any more? The LA Times had a funny article about this, "The risk for Apple iPhone users: They know too much." Being a know-it-all quickly becomes annoying, especially when you cut into a good-natured bull session about what year a Springsteen album was released by looking it up on Wikipedia.
What about the experience of solitude? Mobile phones connect us like never before. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it made me realize that we are losing the experience of truly being on our own. The second story that got me thinking about these issues this week was The Wall Street Journal article, "Mom called and said, 'Slow down!'" I remember getting my driver's license and feeling the rush of freedom that I was on my own, alone. Now there are detailed monitoring systems that parents can install, including GPS, systems that will send parents text messages when their teen drivers speed, and multiple camera options for car interior and windshield view.
This potentially transforms the experience of being a new driver. I don't know yet how I feel about these systems. As much as I relished my independence as a teen, I was a bad driver initially and I am lucky that I didn't have a serous accident. Teen drivers definitely need to develop skill and earn trust. We want them to develop experience, while avoiding life-threatening situations. The WSJ article profiled a 16-year-old girl whose parents had nagged her to wear her seat belt, based on the DriveCam system's video evidence that she was not buckling up. Two weeks later, the girl rolled the car, totaling it, but she was only slightly injured because she was wearing her seat belt.
Teens need to earn trust, parents need to give responsibility. I believe that the teens should at least know they are being monitored. Such a system might be an angel on the shoulder, or a Big Brother nightmare, but either way, teens are not on their own they way they used to be.
Back when I was a neuroscientist, I participated in all sorts of "Women in Science and Technology" events and outreach programs. I have been thinking a lot lately about another kind of "woman in tech," namely those who are able create new jobs for themselves thanks to online connectivity and business tools.
This comes about in many ways. As a writer, for example, blogging has clearly revolutionized grassroots journalism. But beyond that, digital technologies have transformed all parts of the publishing world, creating new opportunities for product development, printing, distribution, and publicity outreach.
Sarah Headrick and Sarah Rivera
(Credit: Custom Made for Kids)I got in touch with author/entrepreneurs Sarah Headrick and Sarah Rivera after coming across their site Custom Made for Kids, which has the quality design of a site you would expect from a large company, but operates from a Yahoo Store platform. I was taken by the concept and illustrations for their personalized children's storybook, The First Adventures of Incredible You, and decided to find out more about the partners behind this new venture, suspecting the the internet was the key ingredient powering every level of their startup company.
Headrick and Rivera confirm that this is the case:
... Read moreI have always enjoyed and admired David Pogue's tech journalism at The New York Times, but I was disturbed by his recent piece "How Dangerous Is the Internet for Children?" which I believe dangerously minimizes the seriousness of the challenges that online life poses for families.
Pogue sets out to write a corrective narrative to what he perceives as a media-overhyped fear of online pedophiles luring children out of their homes, but in the process he discounts other reasonable concerns. The resulting commentary overreacts to the overreactions.
He talks about a mother becoming "hysterical when her 8-year-old stumbled onto a pornographic photo," and reassures us that his 7-year-old was not harmed by accidentally finding doctored "naked" photos of the animated characters The Incredibles.
"Naked pictures" covers a lot of ground, from a National Geographic photo to hard-core pornography. The type of image, extent of exposure, and intent are all relevant in deciding how harmful the experience has been. Pogue's example is not necessarily typical. As I have reported previously, I have spoken to several families whose young sons have been shown explicit, violent pornography by their 8-year-old peers. This was an incredibly upsetting experience for everyone involved.
Additionally, molesters use pornography and exposure to sexuality in many forms, including explicit online conversations, to desensitize and groom their victims.
... Read moreScience teachers everywhere have had always had to face the question, "Dr. T., when are we going to use this?" In pop culture, it has always seemed to me that the general public is science-phobic, unless they are shopping for beauty products. Then it's "bring on the polypeptides," no matter how dubious the product's claims are.
But a new discovery has promise to deliver a genuine benefit, and brings nanotechnology into real life. Last week's edition of NPR's Science Friday explained that geckos use nanotubes to stick to glass surfaces. Now researchers have "designed a surface with similar structures to create a sticky, strong, biodegradable surgical adhesive bandage that could be used in a variety of medical applications."
Nanotechnology has always been inscrutable to me, requiring too much abstract explanation to make a lasting impression on my long-term memory. This engaging story finally made nanotechnology seem like something that the general public should know about. It highlighted the fact that the everyday phenomenon of geckos sticking to glass actually involves an elegant mechanism that relies on nanoscale pillars, Van der Waals forces and capillary action--something many of us learned about in chemistry and promptly forgot about as soon as the test was over.
The Science Friday interview is fascinating, and a New Scientist article provides more technical details for those who are interested in learning more.
The law doesn't seem to have caught up with the evolving concept of online defamation yet, so internet service providers and websites are generally not responsible for the content that their users post. There are many valid reasons for that legal approach, but the website JuicyCampus.com stretches the credibility of this concept. The website's sole reason for existence is to serve as a portal for anonymous gossip, spreading rumor, sexual defamation, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and racism at colleges across the country.
In the era of cyberbullying tragedies, it's depressing to think that a site like this passes for entertainment.
The good news is that a backlash has emerged from students themselves, who are beginning to realize that just because you can say something, doesn't mean you should. I would love to see consumer pressure strike a blow for decency and common sense, without having to invoke legal action or government regulation. It will be interesting to see whether the company's bubble pops on its own.
JuicyCampus.com was started by Duke University grad Matt Ivester. He gives overprivileged college students everywhere a bad name. I don't know anything about his personal background, but it is sad to think of a spot at Duke going to someone who couldn't come up with better use for his prestigious education.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Asian Law Caucus are suing the Department of Homeland Security over aggressive searches and seizures of travelers' property and information at U.S. borders.
As reported on BoingBoing:
ALC, a San Francisco-based civil rights organization, received more than 20 complaints from Northern California residents last year who said they were grilled about their families, religious practices, volunteer activities, political beliefs, or associations when returning to the United States from travels abroad. In addition, customs agents examined travelers' books, business cards collected from friends and colleagues, handwritten notes, personal photos, laptop computer files, and cell phone directories, and sometimes made copies of this information. When individuals complained, they were told, "This is the border, and you have no rights."
"When the government searches your books, peers into your computer, and demands to know your political views, it sends the message that free expression and privacy disappear at our nation's doorstep," said Shirin Sinnar, staff attorney at ALC. "The fact that so many people face these searches and questioning every time they return to the United States, not knowing why and unable to clear their names, violates basic notions of fairness and due process."
NPR's Morning Edition broadcast a segment on this story this morning. The Department of Homeland Security is vigorously defending its right to search and seize at the border, and is supported by legal precedent. The segment suggested that travelers' best option was to bring only essential information along on international trips.
I feel like ordinary American citizens are having to become like Jason Bourne, buying the cell phone, making a call and then throwing it away. A more practical suggestion may be that if you are upgrading a laptop, you may want to keep the old one in stripped-down form for travel. But it would be ironic and sad to leave the light, little MacBook Air at home on the desk while you carry a clunkier model with you.
It will be interesting to see if sensible consumer solutions to this problem spring up, and how they can be marketed without sounding "unpatriotic." Let's face it: just because we have nothing to hide doesn't mean we want to have our lives uploaded to government servers. There must be a way to create a "travel" profile on one's laptop or PDA that doesn't unnecessarily expose all of your contact information to surveillance. Some version of backing up the information before you leave, stripping the laptop to bare bones, and then restoring it after you return home.
Last year Amy put her PhD in neuroscience to good use when she wrote the article debunking Baby Einstein. I, too, aired my thoughts in an article titled buy now, pay forever: the business of tech toys. Today, a blog from open source community member Stormy Peters teaches that we may have it all wrong when it comes to rewards and motivation.
Adlerian psychology teaches that every human being has the goal of belonging, of making a place in his or her world. Discouraged children, who find themselves unable to accomplish this goal on the socially useful side of life through cooperation and contribution, may develop mistaken goals in their struggle to belong. But what is it that encourages or discourages a child? One theory is that praise, which represents a form of judgement, orders the child within an external locus of power, making them helpless or powerless when praise is witheld, whereas responses or natural consequences that relate to a self-centered view—doing things for their own sake— help the child develop an authentic and independent sense of self. What does this have to do with technology?
As I reported in our own family's on-going XO Laptop experiment, the rewards of learning can be both immediate and self-evident, if only the game is not too deeply buried under layers of flashy but meaningless praise. We are struggling against a consumeristic tide that bombards our daughter with unrealistic promises of happiness and prestige/social status, but we are also winning a few battles here and there as the intrinsic rewards of authentic accomplishment push aside the TV clutter for another day.
If the Adlerian hypothesis is correct, that children really want is to belong and to be significant, then how do external rewards help or hurt the child as they grow into adulthood? A dependence on external rewards for a sense of self leads to a profound feeling of emptiness, which is chronicled in the excellent book The Price Of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids. So without telling anybody how to be a better parent, let me just suggest that you look at social software and tech gadgets from a new perspective: what is the reward and who defines it? The more external and the more arbitrary the reward, the more the reward may diminish (to the point of extinction) intrinsic motivation. Conversely, the more ways a child can find some intrinsic reward in the activity (even if it's the reward of decorating rather than programming a laptop), the more the child builds an intrinsic sense of belonging and significance.
Happy Valentine's Day!
Teens may have a better understanding of privacy issues than the adults around them. Unfortunately, when you are a high school student, your personal judgment can still be challenged by an unsympathetic principal.
The Raleigh News & Observer reports that at Cedar Ridge High School in Hillsborough North Carolina, more than 300 juniors were given the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). The military provides and administers the tests without charge, and in return the scores and students' contact information are sent to military branch recruiters and the school.
Cedar Ridge Principal Gary Thornburg was willing to sign on to this deal to get access to what he views as a valuable career assessment tool. There is supposed to be an opt-out procedure, but three students who refused to take the test were sent to the in-school suspension room to take it--not as discipline, according to Thornburg, but because the in-school suspension teacher was available to supervise them while other students were taking the test. Sounds like a blatantly disingenuous answer to me. In my experience as a student and teacher, when you send students to in-school suspension, it is going to feel like a punishment and be perceived that way by others. Surely their well-equipped media center could have handled three students for independent study.
... Read moreTechnology helps us manage family life in many ways. It's hard to imagine being a parent without email and cell phones (though our parents managed just fine), and I've written about TiVO and iPod as transformational technologies for parents in my book, Mojo Mom.
And yet, I sit here on the brink of mental information overload, and physical gadget overload.
The sure sign that this situation has passed the tipping point is that I frequently find myself using one phone to call the other, usually to find my Blackberry as I fly out of the house. It goes both ways though, mobile to landline and vice-versa. I've pitched the idea of a "cordless phone tether" to several friends, and they've all said it was a good idea, before realizing that it was a joke about the fact that we already have corded phones.
Three other signs: First, the proliferation of gadgets and their docks/rechargers/adapters has formed an impenetrable layer in my desk drawer. It's hard to know when it is time to part with each of these accessories. Many of the adapters look nearly identical but have slightly different connectors, creating a confusing mass that is quickly approaching junk.
... Read more
