VER-XIV-0026
“My child was just born and I want to raise them to see clearly.”
A whole new person is here, and the world is already reaching for their attention before they can walk. You can't shield them from the machine forever. But you can build with them, teach them to see the design, think for themselves, and stand on their own ground. Start now, by how you live.
Your Practice
- Decide the values you want to build into them, and write them down while it's fresh.
- Model what you want them to learn, your relationship with your own screen is lesson one.
- Protect their early years for real things: faces, dirt, books, boredom, your full presence.
- Plan to teach them, as they grow, how the attention machine works, so they master it, not serve it.
The Architects
“In pioneer days they used oxen for heavy pulling, and when one ox couldn't budge a log, they didn't try to grow a larger ox. We shouldn't be trying for bigger computers, but for more systems of computers.”
Grace Hopper, "The Wit and Wisdom of Grace Hopper" by Philip Schieber, OCLC Newsletter No. 167, March/April 1987