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Comment by Liquix | Hacker News Reader

I would absolutely agree with your hypothesis about the future. Kids these days don't have the kind of access to technology that you describe - the kind of access that inspires you to take something apart to see how it works, put it back together, explore what you can make it do - they have access to polished, streamlined advertisement-serving systems.

These systems (video streaming and children's games immediately come to mind) are designed to keep kids glued to the screen in order to maximize ad revenue. Any other goal is secondary, if considered at all. The genuine sense of discovery and creation which stems from having a blank & boring canvas to paint on has been replaced with stimuli-drenched dopamine-driven curated experiences. No room for imagination, no need for wonder.

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The second best selling video game of all time is Minecraft, which was hugely popular among children and probably still is. That game is basically a blank and boring canvas to paint on.

Children with an interest in technology can purchase a raspberry pi for $5 today. They can learn javascript programming without leaving the web browser. It's not all doom and gloom because their iPads don't allow them every freedom that a Commodore 64 might.

Taking things apart and trying to understand their behavior is a natural behavior of children and always has been. Regardless of whether they have iPads or rocks, they will always find a way. I wouldn't be too worried about it.

Also, it's always worth considering that most children don't have much of an interest in programming. In the 80's most children weren't at home with a C64. Most of those kids turned out fine too.

It's totally different being pushed to be creative by being poor and having to fix a computer than buying a raspberry pi or enroll into a javascript course, these two things will only happen with tech parents, and only IF, there are thousands of tech parents that give ipads to their children

There's no reason a kid without tech parents can't find out about the raspberry pi themselves and ask their parents for one. Or purchase it themselves. Just like a poor kid without tech parents in the 80s could find out about the Commodore 64 and buy a broken one and fix it, except now the computer is so cheap that there is no point in buying a broken one.

Being forced to fix things is one way to learn but it not the only way to learn.

But we are in the golden age of SparkFun! There are so many great project kits and microcontrollers that I wish I could've found as a kid at RadioShack.

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