I have spawned a mini-geek.  My son Sam is 7.  He’s been working the VCR since he was 2, the DVD Player since 5 (he knew how earlier, but I didn’t want him touching DVDs until I knew he understood how to handle them).  He sits in my lap and plays games on cartoonnetwork.com or kidswb.com with the laptop.  He has used a mouse, a touchpad, and a pointer-stick.  He has always accepted technology readily.

So the other day, we were at Barnes & Noble (he has practically grown up there) and I was managing my Christmas shopping on my new toy (iPAQ) and he wanted to play with it.  So I turned it over to him, and he immediately understood what to do with it, writing and drawing with the stylus as if it were paper.  Then, to my amazement, he used the scroll arrow to move to a “clean” section, and continued to draw.  The only thing I really had to explain to him was that he needed to use a light touch and be careful putting his hand on the screen because it could mess up his drawing.

Amazing, to me, how kids accept technology.  It reminds me of when I was a kid, although new technology then was tape players, VCRs, and later the Apple IIe.  But I was always ahead of the curve in terms of my parents’ peer group.  But there is so much new stuff now.  Since Sam was born, DVD has become a standard, we have tablets and Pocket PCs, viable digital cameras, wireless mice and keyboards…I mean, just a bunch of stuff that wasn’t even around (or around in force) before the late 90s.  And he takes to it, even if it is his first time seeing it (as was the case with the iPAQ).  Maybe it’s judgement clouded by a father’s pride in his budding geek .

Anyway, now I need to go back and re-read the discussion that spawned from Scoble asking how to get kids into programming (sorry too lazy to find link) and see what I can do to encourage Sam’s technolust. (Drawing Below)

Now Playing:  Flavor of the Weak – American Hi-Fi