I spent this weekend with Robots. Lots of them. I was at the First Lego League State Finals for Florida. Virsona was sponsoring a local middle school who had made it through several qualifiers to the State Finals – not bad!
There were 48 team each whose robot had to complete various missions. You can learn more about this program at First Lego League.
I watched these kids age 9-14 and clearly saw their understanding of how to make robots do complex activities. It really made me think about the age based digital divide and the attitudes kids have to technology. For people 30 and older I think we still have a general fear of technology – especially Artificial Intelligence. We grew up on a diet of machine intelligence as a bad thing – mad computers trying to take over the world (aka skynet) – modern day examples of the same Frankenstein nightmare of our creations gone horribly wrong.
These kids however were fully engaged. They don’t view technology as "that stuff", rather it is an integral part of who they are. Of course you can pause tv, of course you can carry around 10,000 songs with you, of course you can build a complex robot in your spare time, of course you can find out any fact immediately, chat with historical figures in real time – no problems. That’s just the way the new world works.
So while us pre-Digital Generationals tend to question the use of technology, agonize over the implications and moralize over the applications, kids just embrace it. The sooner we can learn to embrace it too the better we will be able to engage with kids. If we don’t, they will be describing 3 types of intelligence pretty soon – Digital Generation Human Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence and pre-Digital Generation Human Intelligence.
Anyone know where I left my Flock of Seagulls LP?
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