Crayola vs. iPhone

I have noticed at my work recently that more and more children are inclined to use electronics. At first I started to notice that more and more children were asking o help their parents use the Debit/ Credit machine. They are very fast with the machine and already understand how they work. While a lot of older customers struggle with what buttons to push, most children are way ahead of their parents before they instruct them on the next step. It is like going through a self check-out at a store; most of the people who are above the age of 45 struggle with them and take much longer than a person in the twenties.

Then a more obvious thing caught my attention. The colouring books we provide for children at the restaurant sit unused on the table while the kids play with their parent’s iPhone. That happened the other day at work and the kid was screaming and carrying on until his parents let him watch his favourite movie on their phone. I suppose this is as good a technique to stop a fit as any other, but it is just a bit fascinating to watch this child play games and watch TV whenever he wants, wherever he wants.

This brings to light some very interesting questions regarding a possible disconnect between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants and how entertainment works for the two groups. The digital Immigrants used to play with colouring books and essentially established their own entertainment. In the world of a digital Native, the entertainment is instantaneous and is provided for them with every demand. I think that technology has made such progressive leaps so quickly that we are not sure how to fully utilize it as of yet. Have we solved the problem of children being impatient while waiting for food at a restaurant or have we created a problem because they just don’t learn patience?

My Phone Knows Something I Don't...

Yesterday I had a very weird thing happen. Since I don’t have access to the internet on the weekend I rely primarily on my cell phone to look at my emails and Facebook. Facebook isn’t something I have totally figured out on my phone, mostly because although it is a smart phone, it is not all that user friendly.

The phone that I have is the Nokia N95, and although it was advertised as a pretty good smart phone, I have found that it really doesn’t compete. Despite having some interesting things like video calling and a 5megapixel camera, there wasn’t a whole lot else to think about. Well that and the fact that it still functions using a standard keyboard, which meant that I didn’t have to adjust and I can now text without looking at my phone. I am quite proud of that.

So now that we are all familiar with the Nokia N95, I will fill you in on the events of my Sunday night adventure. The Nokia N95 doesn’t really have Apps so I just use a bookmarking function on my phone to see Facebook. When I clicked on the Facebook home tab, it took me to some other person’s Facebook, It took me a few seconds to figure out that that was even what was going on I was so surprised. I had no idea who the person e was, and then I figure it out because when I hit the profile button, I was visiting some girl named Shu’s profile. Still not totally convinced that my phone had somehow inadvertently and without any knowledge on my part as to how, hacked some other profile I changed this poor girls status! I felt that she should know that this happened so I posted through her own profile “this is not my profile, but my phone has somehow hacked into it…sorry!”

This very surprising event really got me thinking though, because I have no clue how my technology works, how can I trust that it will work correctly? Just something interesting that I thought I would share.