My friend just got a Kindle Fire. It seems to be quite sophisticated. The Fire has a touch screen, which means manipulations can be accomplished with a finger tip and no computer mouse or touch pad is needed. It is connected to Wi-Fi, which means that the entire internet is at the disposal of the user. Quite a few small programs are available for the Fire, as is true of the iPhone, iPad and tablets using the Android operating program by Google.
Recently, an alert teacher asked me if I thought these electronic devices were hurting kids who use them. I had just watched a 12 yr old, a 4, 3 and 2 yr old play with an iPad and a Fire while adult relatives around them watched and got in a few seconds of use, too. It seemed clear to me that brains and social skills of understanding others and expressing one's ideas and desires were being used well by all concerned.
On a walk this morning, my friend described his use of online scrabble playing. It happens that yesterday, Lynn and I got into a conversation with a woman who explained her fun in using the iPad app, "Words with Friends". She described playing a Scrabble-like game using her iPad and playing with others who were playing too but the group was connected only by use of the internet, not face-to-face. My friend seemed quite enthused about the game being played between his wife and two married daughters who live 10 miles and 90 miles away. He had just gotten home and taken a peek at the game in the Fire only to find that other players had made a turn. He and his wife are clearly engaged with each other and others, known and unknown, playing the game.
Many of the companies who write and sell iPad games for Apple also sell the same game for Kindle Fire and Android tablet. Just as online students in a class may exchange messages with classmates anywhere in the world, online games may include players from anywhere. Some online classes, called MOOC's for Massive Online Open Course, may include 20,000 students at once. I imagine that the various sorts of online games may be similarly large. I can only guess at what is happening to the old format of chess by mail when it is transformed into a modern computer format.
Physicists and other scientists have a saying that "More is different", meaning that aspects of a chemical or physical phenomena may EMERGE (to use a currently hot word) when the atoms or molecules or other components get sufficiently numerous. Sometimes, life, for instance, in a town of 3000 is different in fundamental ways from life in a city of 3 million. Things can happen when the mass gets large enough. Aspects, or properties, may emerge where they were not, before.
The man had just returned from an evening with his long-time bridge group and his wife had just returned from a lecture to a packed hall on the speaker's experiences in World War II. They are not without face-to-face activities, either. Just wait for 50 years and check how the current crop of 15 year olds is doing socially at age 65. I am betting they will be fine, even if I am not here to collect.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
