Technology for the Young

He is seven years old. He can manipulate the internet like a seasoned computer pro. Although he can read only the simplest words, he maneuvers through the layers of word-oriented menu screens with a rapidity that borders on astounding.

It makes it all the more difficult to realize that there are so many things in the world that remain as a total surprise to him.

Like car windows.

Having personally experienced the drawbacks of electronics in automobiles, I swore that I would never again own a car with electric windows. He saw me manually cranking the glass one evening and asked what I was doing.

Rolling up the window, I replied, not giving a thought to my answer.

Rolling a window? he asked.

I looked over and realized that he had never seen a hand-cranked window.

Yeah, I explained. I turn this handle around and around, and the window goes up.

He grinned broadly, and I could tell he wanted to try it for himself.

Cool, he said.

Friday morning, I was to drive him to school for his day in first grade. Normally, I wake up without an alarm, not having to be at the store until 9:30 or so, to make the ten o'clock opening time. Not wanting to take a chance, I set the alarm for eight o'clock. As it turned out, I awoke ahead of the alarm and it went off just as I emerged from my shower. Never did like the buzz of an alarm. It was on the wake-to-the-radio setting.

He popped in seconds after I shut it off.

Who was that? he wanted to know.

My alarm, I said.

It can talk? Make it talk again.

It's a radio.

I didn't know alarms had a radio in them.

It's a clock radio, I explained. (A real eye-opening bit of philosophy, huh? Remember - it was early in the morning...)

In our video-oriented household, radio is non-existent. Akin to magic, to the uninitiated seven year old.

Then I recall the look on his face when we toured the zoo one Sunday, and he saw for the first time those strange and powerful things that are giraffes, elephants, and crocodiles.

What would the world be like if we could look at things every day of our lives with that same sense of wonder and amazement?

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