Bringing Up Bobbin

Differences

I have been contemplating the impact that the difference in technology and information access in 1973 when I was two, and today when Bobbin is 2, has had on Bobbin's view of the world. Just little things, mind you - not deep philosophical pondering. But it's the little things that are interesting to think about. Like...

Bobbin is convinced that all content that she views on the television is on-demand and completely controllable by a wireless remote control. she cannot grasp the concept that some of the shows she's watching real-time on the actual TV channel, are one-time events that are viewable only at that point in time, only in the order presented and are not repeatable, fast-forwardable, re-windable, or chapter-selectable. One of her favourite TV shows in the morning while we're getting ready for school is "Curious George". We do not have any "Curious George" shows on DVD or recorded to hard disk so her only option for watching it is to tune in at the right time on the right channel. And sometimes she doesn't, and gets disappointed. And it's near impossible to explain to a two-year-old why some stuff on the TV can be seen anytime and other stuff can only be seen at certain times. We've also stopped allowing her to choose the scene she wants to watch in movies - we've instituted the "beginning to end" rule for all recorded or DVD media. If she stops watching before the end, then when she comes back to it we do let her decide whether she wants to watch from the beginning or pick up where she left off. But no more chapter-choosing at whim. It was just getting too out of hand and I wondered about what sorts of neuron connections, associations, and assumptions, were forming in her brain with this ability to seemingly be able to "cut to the chase" or at least the content of interest with everything. I didn't want it to start translating into other aspects of life :-)

By contrast, of course, at the same age Bobbin is now, I was watching a black-and-white television that required you to get up and turn the dials, and the concept of a VCR let alone a DVD player or "TiVo" was still science fiction for most. And we got, maybe, a handful of channels. I didn't know and didn't care, as long as I could watch Polka Dot Door, and the Friendly Giant. And if I didn't happen to tune in, I couldn't ask my parents to call it up from the hard disk to watch it on demand. I had to wait until the next day and even then, it'd be a different episode. I had "missed out". Nor could I skip to my favourite parts (I hated Marigold, and loved Polkaroo. What a difference that functionality would have made. Not ;-)

Side note: Yeah, they had colour TVs back then, but we didn't actually own one until we moved back from Germany in 1979, and at that point I had already spent 3 whole consecutive formative years tv-less - and phone-less, I might add - in a foreign country.

Bobbin has a CD player in her room, and collection of music CDs that she loves to listen to - everything from Sound of Music to Sesame Street Sing-a-longs to Sharon, Lois and Bram, to the lullaby versions of Led Zepplin and Johnny Cash. She knows how to take out and put in the CDs by herself, knows how to start and stop them, and how to adjust the volume. And she does this on a regular basis, choosing the music that suits her mood.

At her age, I was listening to vinyl records, on my parent's record player in our living room at the farm. Sesame Street, Bambi, and countless Christmas Carol records. And of course, my parents' Neil Diamond and Nana Miskouri. Mom and Dad had to put them on because the record player was out of my reach - for good reason. Doesn't take much to damage that little arm or the needle inside it, not to mention the records themselves. Eventually, at the ripe old age of 4, I graduated to having my very own cassette tape player that I could use all by myself, and which I did use to listen to all my stories on tape. It was black and had a big silver switch that you pushed forward to play, and backwards to rewind. It looked like a little mini gear shift. I was always envious of the kids that I knew that had the cassette tape players with the big bulky buttons though because I preferred pushing buttons to moving the switch. I liked the big clicky sound the buttons made.

CDs and DVDs present an interesting challenge in and of themselves. There are some little silver discs that are usable only on the computer. Computer games like her favourite Sesame Street game. There are identical looking little silver discs that contain only audio content and no visual content. You can use them on the computer, or in the DVD player, or the CD player but you only ever hear stuff. You can't see stuff. Then there are the little silver discs that lets you see stuff and hear stuff. But they only work on the Computer or in the DVD player. If you put them into the CD player nothing happens. But damn if you can tell the difference between the three when you're only 2 and haven't learned how to read yet. And it gets downright nutty trying to explain it so she understands. I think she grasps the concept now - they all look the same, but do different things and don't all work in the same machines, and when she has additional context (like if they are in their case and/or are sitting near a particular type of "player") she can figure it out mostly. DVDs mostly come in rectangle cases and we keep them near the TV. Music CDs mostly come in square cases and they hang out near her CD player but also near the computer. Computer games come in both types of cases but you usually only find them on the shelf above our computer.

The computer is something she totally takes for granted at this point. It's just another part of her world - she doesn't give it any thought. It's like the fridge, stove, washer, dryer. You have one, and you play games or look at pictures or watch movies or listen to music, or type stuff and that's just what you do. She knows what we use it for; she asks to play games, look at pictures and movies of herself and Tim and I. She even recently dictated a letter to Aunt Sarah :-) The games are vivid, exciting (note, we're talking pre-schooler exciting. Big Bird, Elmo, and a bit of the Cat in the Hat thrown in for good measure), with full surround sound. My first computer was a commodore Vic 20. I copied lines of code from the manual into my TV screen via the huge klunky keyboard that also housed the actual "computer" to make it turn colours, and thought that was way exciting. The sounds that were emitted from the TV speakers sounded like SOS signals.

If Bobbin wants to see a picture or video of something... anything... from astronauts gliding through space, to the ancient pyramids of Egypt, to a live stream of newly born panda bears frolicking in the zoo to a volcano erupting in a cloud of black ash and rock (we'll stick with educational stuff, thank you) I just pull up my browser and away we go. She thinks it's fabulous. I'll ask her what she wants to see, she'll tell me "Giraffes" and voila - we're at the Woodland Park Zoo web site, or National Geographic, or any other number of places scrolling through countless pictures and videos of Giraffes. On demand. Instant knowledge. Instant gratification. You just gotta have your search safety settings on "high", avoid using image search, and weed out the crap. That's what Mommies are for. Later, Parental Controls will start getting involved as well. And the computer will be staying in the kitchen :-)

The telephone is another interesting piece of technology that has evolved over the years. When I wanted to pretend I was talking on a phone with just my hand as the prop, I would hold out my thumb and pinky finger... cause the receivers were those big bulky ones that curved slightly so your mouth was actually near the mouthpiece. Bobbin pretends she's talking on the phone by holding her hand up to her ear. Like you see people who are talking on cell phones doing. She pretends that the digital timer is a phone because it is the same compact size and has a digital readout and little buttons. She also doesn't think the fact that I take and view pictures on the same apparatus that I use to make phone calls is anything to write home about. It's a phone. It's a camera. It's a photo album. It's the thing mommy uses to read her the email that Aunt Sarah sent her. It's the thing mommy always has in her pocket :-)

The iPhone, which is the kind of phone I have, is likewise seeming to have its own impact on Bobbin's view of the world. She thinks nothing of the fact that when she gently traces her finger over the picture it scrolls to the next picture. Or that she can enlarge and shrink with a pinch of the fingers. It just makes sense to her. Everything should work that way in her view. Everything that looks like that, and can do those things. It's fascinating to watch her interact with it.

All the lights in our house are on dimmer switches, and I've noticed a tendency for Bobbin to use the same phrases as she does with volume to express how bright or dark she would like the room to be. "Turn the light louder, mommy". She likes her lights loud, especially in the bathroom.

Instead of your traditional photo albums, we have printed picture books of Bobbin - the kind you format online with digital photos you upload, and then order in hardbound printed format. The pictures have captions, and are sized and formatted in various ways, and she loves "reading" through these with me. Tim gave me a digital photo frame at Christmas and I loaded it up with pictures of us - the two of us, and then the three of us. Bobbin was mesmerized by it. we have your traditionally framed photos of Bobbin too, but even those were taken by digital cameras (her Santa picture was printed out on the spot and even came with a CD). I remember my first camera. It had a flash cube that turned automatically, and a film cartridge that you popped into the back. I remember taking the film to the drug store to get developed, and getting the pictures back a week later. No instant gratification there. In fact, I still have little tubes of film in various drawers around the house that have to be at least 8 years old, because I started using a digital camera exclusively around then.

Bobbin knows how to unlock and lock my car with a press of a button on my key fob remote. It makes the headlights blink too, and a cool little beep. She likes to do it while standing in the kitchen in front of the french door. She'll hold out her hand, aiming through the glass at the car, and press the button and giggle. She likes to make the car "wink" at her :-)

Banking and money-handling is another aspect of life that has fundamentally changed. Bobbin does have a bank account and we'll make rare visits to the local branch to dump the contents of her piggy bank into the coin sorter, and make a deposit. But even on those visits, we don't interact with the teller in person. I have eto walk up to the video teller, pick up the phone, and talk to someone on a television screen. When we need to exchange actual stuff like deposit slips and cash, I put it into a clear plastic tube, press a button that causes it to get sucked up a pipe into nowhere, and then a few minutes later it comes back down with different stuff in it. Way way different than the visits to the bank that I recall when I was a kid.

Most of our banking, however, is done online so we don't do a lot of actual branch visits. Our bill payments are done online, so rarely will Bobbin ever see us writing a check for something. And our purchases are all done with our debit card so cash rarely changes hands. I remember when ATMs started to make their first appearance, and thought it was cool that you could walk up to a machine, stick a card in, and get money out without having to interact with a person. Toronto Dominion Bank came out with the "green machine" as the nickname for their ATM. When I was old enough to get an ATM card for my savings account (I think you actually had to be 14 to be given an ATM card at our bank) I thought that was way cool and was so proud. I was very careful with it.

When we go grocery shopping together I try and make sure I have some coin or paper bills, even small ones, on hand so I can let Bobbin "pay" for part of the groceries. But sometimes all I scrounge up are some pennies and nickels because I didn't have time to withdraw cash and Bobbin will proudly deposit these on the counter at the grocery store. Luckily the cashiers at our local PCC are happy to humour us, so I'll have a $50 total and then she'll subtract the 17 cents that Bobbin gave her and let me pay for the rest via my debit card.

Right now our primary focus with Bobbin on "Money Management" is saving - putting stuff in her piggy bank and making deposits into her savings account. On occasion I'll give her a little bit of money while we're in a store and ask her if she wants to buy something with it or save it so she can buy something more expensive later when she's saved enough. So despite the fact that almost all of our transactions take place electronically now and a little plastic card seems to magically pay for everything at whim, we are trying to teach her the value of money and making smart decisions, and that money is something you earn, not something you just have in endless supply. eventually when she's capable of grasping the concept, she'll be allowed to check her account balance online with our help but we're a ways out from that. It's definitely different though, because that little plastic debit card does seem so magical (not as magical as a credit card will seem when she understands the difference, but still). So for now we'll stick to cash-on-hand and counting out the stuff in her piggy bank.

Yeah... times, they are a-changin'. I can't wait to see what Bobbin's own blog entry will look like as she contemplates the differences between her childhood and her child's childhood. What will be the "blog" of the future? Maybe she'll just be projecting little 3-D holograms of her memories into a special nook of cyber space, accessible only by wearing the full-body sensation suit and viewing helmet. She'll be able to recall and project smells and tastes of her youth to her cyber-audience - comparing the aroma and palette of her favourite food - those oven-warmed frozen meatballs that were actually still made with meat from real animals - to that of the test-tube grown version of the same in the future. "I remember when they slaughtered animals for meat and the steak-on-a-stick that I used to love so much came from an actual cow" will be the thought that drifts alongside the images, smells, and tastes. Mmmm.

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