The Evolution of Childhood Play

The BBC News article “Children ‘give playground games a modern twist,’” discusses the trend of children’s pretend play to incorporate ideas from the media. Long gone are the days where you see children playing mancala and hopscotch on the playground. Nowadays, you are more likely to see children imitating popular television shows like Survivor or American Idol.

Is this transition in childhood play detrimental? Luckily, developmentalists are saying that this shift is just a different type of play. Children are just as inventive as they always have been, they are just experimenting with themes that they are learning from television. In terms of the violent nature of some television shows, researchers are saying that children have always engaged in play fighting as a way of understanding the violence they see around them. Children will imitate the behavior that they see on television, but so long as they are being properly supervised, this type of play is not found to have detrimental effects. If anything, it gives children the opportunity to make sense of the world around them.

Those concerned that more traditional childhood games are being lost can revive them by teaching them games such as four square, jumping rope, marbles, and hopscotch. Children pick up from their environments. If you do not want them imitating violent television, use parental controls.

Computer vs. Brain

The idea of robots and computers taking over the world has long been the stuff of kids’ books and movies. Now, however, we seem not to be too far from this fictional technological invasion.
For the past couple years, leading computer company I.B.M has been developing its own humanly-smart computer. I.B.M named the computer “Watson” and it is extremely outstanding computer due to its ability to understand instantly and respond correctly to questions. Furthermore, Watson is programmed to recall facts, analyze complicated and confusing sentences, and quickly press a button. Therefore, the company decided to host a Jeopardy trivia challenge in which Watson competed against the two of the best Jeopardy players in the U.S. Even though its competitors were faster and more experienced, Watson managed to stay in the lead for most of the competition. Only during the “Final Jeopardy” part of the game did its creators think Watson would do poorly, because in this part the contestants are given thirty seconds to answer a general knowledge question. Since this question can tie many subjects and informational data all together, the answer requires deep analysis. Nevertheless, the humans’ creation ultimately beat the humans. Watson prevailed.


This triumph not only proved the power of technology, but also opened many people’s eyes to new ideas for future “Watson-usage”, primarily in the medical field. Scientists and engineers have already begun transforming this new machine into a “cybernetic assistant” model for doctors and physicians, claiming there is a limited memory capacity to the human brain whereas this computer can keep learning and storing information infinitely.
Although this is very exciting, innovating technological tool, I am sure it makes some of us feel a little unsettled. When I first read this article , my initial shocked reaction was accompanied with many questions. So machines can be smarter than humans? Are computers going to replace people in all job fields in the near future? Who is going to make sure the new computers are not taking over our society?
I do not think anyone can provide the answers to these questions. Even the creators of Watson admitted in this video clip that they never imagined this kind of technology would be plausible and available during their life time. We should approach this social-technological revolution just like we did with the invention of the internet- taking it step by step and seeing where all of these changes and new paths are taking us. I continue to hope it will be to a better place.

Google This, Google That

This is a fascinating article. It describes how Google recently linked to J. C. Penny for a wide variety of things. It was determined that J. C. Penny was causing this to happen by creating websites that linked back to J. C. Penny. That crossed the line as far as Google was concerned, so it made J. C. Penny less relevant in searches. This potentially cost J.C. Penny millions in lost sales. This is a good example of the power that Google wields and that's what I'd like to discuss in my blog.

First though, some Google background. I learned a bit about the revolutionary Google Algorithm in my linear algebra class. People had already thought to base websites’ relevance on number of links to and from other websites. What Google founders did was figure out how to weight which links in what way. This is all done with a system of linear equations (you know, actual numbers with just a few variables). From these equations, Google figures out what you are looking for when you type in “something interesting."

So then, what does Google do with their algorithms? Of course, the better question is: What doesn’t Google do? I don’t know. You can read books on Google, you can chat with friends on Google, you can even do 3D CAD modeling on Google (if you don't know what that is, Google it). Google.org is a massive charity and all-around-do-gooding enterprise backed by Google. Google might even be getting into law enforcement. The article presents Google as judge and jury, “…Mr. Cutts and his colleagues are acutely aware of the singular power they wield as judge, jury and appeals panel.” And also as a type of medium within the larger internet. Google is in some ways the ultimate port-of-trade, imposing tariffs, policing its merchants, and dictating traffic. In a way, it is even the very water in which one is shipping.

This, and Google’s tussles with the Chinese government, gives me an idea. What if Google became a sort of cyber United Nations? It would have much more power and unilateral decision making ability than the actual U.N. because it would be one body, not a coalition. And since most of the internet now flows through Google’s hands, it literally controls the (virtual) lay of the land.

I wonder if this is good. Right now I trust Google, for whatever reasons. But what if it loses that trust? What will we do?

No More Make-Believe: the Death of Healthy Childhoods

When I was a kid, all of my spare time was spent reading or playing. Winters were spent curled up in front of the fire reading every book I could get my hands on and summers were spent running around outside, practically naked, for every moment of daylight. Stories in my head came alive in make-believe games; everything I did came from my imagination and was brought to life with my bare hands and with whatever I could turn into toys or props to enact my stories. My friends and I made hundreds of miniature fairy villages out of stones, twigs, and leaves, dressed ourselves up as pirates, princes and princesses, and romped through the mud until we became brown mud-monsters that were not allowed anywhere near the white furniture. This was my entire childhood; there was no Internet, no television, and no constant input of media. I was always happy, energetic, and, albeit constantly muddy, healthy.

Now, I look at my ten-year-old sister and how she is growing up. She was introduced to the Internet and television when she was about seven years old. I watched her slowly become more and more addicted to online games, social gaming networks for kids, education software, and Disney TV shows on Youtube. It’s as if her entire daily focal point is on the computer in the living room. She tunes the entire world out for hours everyday and her eyes gloss over as her brain hooks into the world of cyberspace. Getting her to just look up and focus on us when we are talking to her is a struggle.

Instead of using and expanding her imagination by reading and playing, my sister spends the majority of her leisure time online. I worry that all of the media is adversely effecting her development. I am not sure to what extent the constant connection is affecting her neurological responses, but I do know that her personality and reactions to social situations are extremely different from my own personality and reactions when I was her age. She is extremely volatile; after being constantly stimulated by media all day, any extraneous stimulation or stress throws her into a completely over-stimulated state. Temper tantrums are frequent and her real-life friendships suffer as she spends less and less time playing in person with her friends; they all have their own online gaming accounts and choose to spend their time together via the computer.

My experience of endless outdoor playtime and make-believe seems to be a foreign concept to my sister’s generation. In the book After the death of Childhood; Growing up in the Age of Electronic Media, David Buckingham explores this idea of the misplacement or loss of healthy childhoods. He explores the argument that electronic media is causing the disappearance or “death” of the type of childhood I had. Buckingham also touches on the idea that there is an ever-growing gap between different generation’s relationships with media and technology. He points out that the lines of what defines "childhood" are getting progressively fuzzy as the constant influence of media catapults children into pre-mature adulthood. 

The thing that is the most disturbing to me is that the amount of time my sister spends online is below the average of all of her friends and other kids her age. Everywhere I look, kids are plugged into their iPads, cell phones, laptops, Wii video games, etc., instead of spending their time actively playing with real-life toys and friends. My question is that is the world of cyberspace forcing healthy, playful childhoods into the backseat, or even destroying them all together? Can children develop properly with the constant stimulation from all of the surrounding media? I worry for the repercussions of this on my sister’s generation. 

~Cherise Glodowski