271–280 of 283 posts
That's why looking at the participant of the education system is very important. Be it Kids, Schools, Teachers or PTAs. All will have to work towards this success.
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I grew up with much the same freedom: in small town Iowa, the school bus was for kids 20 miles away. My street would join the larger neighborhood's kids for the 5 mile walk to and from everyday, rain, thunderstorms, winter snow storm or not. If snow was really bad, dads with snowmobiles would ferry the kids, pulling trains of sleds. Rain was okay, no matter how hard. After school, the "bike gangs" of kids would be ro…
> Now it is just another generica in the US corporate sameland, with the original Iowa Natives unable to understand what happened to their culture. Is this a very cleverly disguised allegory for the loss of indigenous culture by invading hordes, descended from Europeans who settled the coast of what is now the United States? Do you actually consider small town mid-20th century midwestern US culture to be the culture…
I course I recognize these are not the original Iowa Natives. I am referring to the ideal of small towns and their community culture. Which was very real not that long ago.
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>There's a cultural vibe of individualism [where?] preventing overwatch of kids [whose kids?] by adults which has led, in part, to the prohibitive [prohibiting what?] autonomy that I had as a kid. I don't quite understand what you're saying here, but I'm genuinely interested. Could you clarify? Active listening: What I thought you said is that in, say, the Philippines, there is a culture of individualism that prevent…
The article "Letting Kids Light Matches and 9 other seemingly scary things that German parents do" [1] provides the point of view of an American mother on parenting and schooling in Germany. (I can't check the link from France, hope it works.) Otherwise, it's all about Sara Zaske's book "Achtung Baby", anyway [2]. 1. http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/parenting/sc-fam-ge... 2. https://sarazaske.com/upcoming-boo…
Nonetheless, I'm a 34-year-old American who has been lighting matches since probably the age of 5 or 6...
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> Which will be used only for games, because you are not interested in anything else? Or programming, having a job you have passion for and are good at, being able to produce work people see value in, sustaining yourself, you know, not living in a gutter and stuff dying of a heroin overdose? > Only in terms of your physical health. Otherwise iirc addiction is defined as having negative effect on your life (work, soci…
I am not talking about liking games and gaming. I am talking about addiction.
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Is this really so hard to figure out? Very few people would do things which are useful to keep civilization running if they have a choice. Look at what people do with their leisure time - watch commercial TV, play video games, look at nonsense on Facebook. It wouldn't be pretty.
a) Why is that a bad thing? It's bad for the people themselves but arguably it's not terrible for society as a whole. Better than those people going out and getting into trouble, for instance. b) I imagine that in a world without meaningful work, having meaningful hobbies might be seen as trendy. Just like eating poorly and being unfit signal low social status today, being a media-consuming couch potato would be cons…
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What about corporate policies that refuse to do business with minors ? You can’t even use Uber as a 16 year old.
I consider that spectacularly dumb, but it's a second order problem caused by the lack of legal recognizance of contacts signed by minors.
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Personally I think there are more people than you think who would be perfectly happy to clean toilets as their contribution, so long as they were compensated fairly for it.
Isn't that the entire point of the free market? To find the price that incentivizes the necessary level of production of a good/service? The alternative is a central authority setting prices, which has historically had disastrous results.
Other compensation that I'd accept instead - social status, respect, ability to spend my time in beautiful places and talk to interesting, educated people, opportunities to work in interesting buildings or locations, opportunities to work for organizations that I believe in, ability to have more kids, and live in a community that sees childrearing as a community responsibility. All these things are easier to find if you have money, but they're not exactly things money can buy.
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Three problem with locked-down software and hardware is that it is the environment. An immutable environment leaves no room for creativity. Sure, you can go find an open environment, but when I was growing up, I was already there; and that made all the difference. I didn't need a mentor to introduce me. I was free to stumble into the world of software via my own interests.
That's just not true. Plenty of creativity is available in immutable environments. Working around limitations is a key factor of creativity in my opinion.
The limitations are arbitrary and nearly impossible to get around. Computers, especially smart phones, tablets, etc. are being treated less as property of the buyer and more as property of the seller/manufacturer.
For example: When it is very difficult to unlock a bootloader, then most people do not find it interesting to try other operating systems. Very few are more creative, and the rest are just prevented from exploring/learning/creating just because they have the wrong device.
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That's just not true. Plenty of creativity is available in immutable environments. Working around limitations is a key factor of creativity in my opinion.
Sure, but it's a different kind of creativity. The limitations are arbitrary and nearly impossible to get around. Computers, especially smart phones, tablets, etc. are being treated less as property of the buyer and more as property of the seller/manufacturer. For example: When it is very difficult to unlock a bootloader, then most people do not find it interesting to try other operating systems. Very few are more cr…
She'll probably be coding by the time she is 8, but she mostly does graphics and music now (for instance, she uses piano-karaoke software I developed that runs in Chrome on most any device). The "unlocking the bootloader" issue hasn't cropped up yet, but maybe I would be more frustrated if we had an iOS instead of chromeOS, Android and MacOS devices.
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An indirect way of encouraging this is including kids in what you are doing, as opposed to engineering activities for them. A lot of kids' world these days is an artificial reality, made for them. School, soccer, art class, play dates. The reason the activity exists is to give kids an experience. We're not interested in it, because it's kid stuff. When I was a kid, some of the most formative activities were fishing,…
> When I was very small (2-4), if my parents were painting a room, I was also in old clothes with a paintbrush "helping". Same with spring cleaning or whatnot. One of my favourite childhood photos is me mowing the lawn (with a plastic "bubble spewing" lawnmower). A thing I used to walk behind my father as he mowed the lawn. It never really had the soap to make bubbles in it. Didn't care about that. I was helping
Small kids have an instinct to learn: they follow you around and copy your behavior. It takes great responsibility to shape the future of a person. And with your own flaws replayed in front of you, you change, you become a better person because of it.
I remember that age. And I loved when I was doing stuff with my dad. Before I was 7 I had worked with wood, handled the axe and knife, welded metal, messed with bikes, capsized a boat, tied knots and shot rifles. I wasn't good, I didn't contribute, I was just given small tasks to free my dad to do the real work. I felt I was on the team, and I learned a lot.
My father always answered all my weird questions, and if he wasn't able to, he looked it up and told me at bed time.
When I was 12, and enthusiastic told him about a game have played on my Commodere 64. He listened and was understanding of my enthusiasm. Then he said: "But did you program that game?", and I replayed "No, of course not...". And my Dad replayed: "So you are only running other peoples programs...". That sentence is the reason I'm in IT and reading this site...