Sadly there are no longer any children in our house, and quite apart from the daily pleasure (mostly) of having them around they are sorely missed for some very important contributions they made to the smooth running of daily life. A small child could be guaranteed to be able to break into the house when we had lost the keys, by being able to squeeze through the tiniest window that had been left open. They could usually be relied upon to pick up and carry outside the frog, bird, or spider that had found its way into the house, and of course they provided the perfect excuse to leave the boring supper party, "We are so sorry, but we have to take the baby sitter home."
Children now seem to be born with an extra gene, a gene which appears to have a direct link to the computer keyboard and screen. They have no fear or sense of dread as they approach the new computer; in fact it is as if they and the computer become one. A symbiotic relationship and deeply satisfying, it leads me to wonder about the nature of that relationship, and the difference, if there is any, between the children of the 1990s who have grown up in a world of screens and keyboards, and the "computer buffs" of my generation who have fallen in love with the computer and embraced it and all its works whole-heartedly.
The younger generation however takes for granted the genius that has allowed this technology to be common-place in their schools and homes; whilst their fathers and mothers marvel at the "process" that enables them to create documents in a tenth of the time it would have taken them ten years ago, children treat the machines with a casualness that is breath-taking. It's there for them to work with, play with, or to express their creativity with. To do with as they wish.
Will the relationship to the computer isolate or join us to society? I think it is a large question to which we can only begin to speculate. If we add to the question, "is there a child in the house," the question "is there a computer, or two in the house," we could then posit a third question: "Who does the child relate best or most often to — the computer or the family?"
I suspect that those families who have respect and love for each other and many interests will use the acquisition of advanced communications to enrich their lives, and those troubled families who find relating difficult will use the same equipment to defend themselves against the need to grapple with the difficult business of relating to each other.
Relating to a screen is not the same as relating to a person, no matter how sophisticated the information on that screen is. It isn't much fun interacting with something that doesn't answer back. Come to think of it, it isn't as much fun without a child in the house.
© Pauline Hodson