Meet the Family That Shuns Technologies Introduced After 1986

I didn't watch the video, but I read the original newspaper article about this family...and newspapers should be somewhat troubled that the family didn't talk about how they were going to re-subscribe to the newspaper in order to keep informed...Maybe they never liked newspapers to begin with, or maybe they just see that newspapers -- in print form -- are far less informative and useful than they were 25 years ago.

> And he's had trouble getting more work, as well, because so many workplaces now only accept job applications online.

There is an intelligent limiting of technology for a purpose, and there is brainless dogma.

They started with the first, and ended with the second.

I may be ignorant as I haven't been 5 years old in quite some time nor am I a parent yet, but what would you say this 5 year old child is going to lack developmentally after spending one year as if it's 1986 at his home? There was no mention as to whether the children were home schooled or not so we can assume the child is most likely in the public school system.

If their 5 year old is getting to spend half the day in the year 2013 with his classmates, & half the day with family in the year 1986 it sounds like the best of both worlds doesn't it?

Assuming they were willing to continue the experiment, what goes for median level of proficiency shouldn't be that difficult to achieve in a short time. They would probably be better served learning how to operate or program a 1986 era computer. They could still learn about Unix, Lisp, Smalltalk, C, spreadsheets, word processors, (La)Tex, etc. After being exposed to that stuff, they might even be disappointed when they get access to contemporary technology.

Well, not so fast. There is a certain quality to those who grew up with computers in their home of that era. We could call it being more "hardcore" or talk of The Little Coder's Predicament in today's era.

Take John Romero, who loved playing video games, but didn't have the endless quarters to play them in the arcade. So he started creating games by programming them, playing them and tweaking them endlessly. And that's where he learned game design (he was the designer of Doom and Quake).

This isn't to say that this is the "greatest generation" of technologists or something -- they were merely well-suited for what came afterwards, which was an exciting time anyway.

However, I will venture to say that those who come of age in the early years of a certain technology, art form or skill seem to have fewer limits on their creativity. When you have stood on the shoulders of giants your whole life, you are much less likely to have "ground-level" ideas. You want to program the next great MMORPG, not a game about mutant camels.

So maybe this is a poor technological environment on the average, but it could be argued that it could engender a rare sort of brilliance as well. Since it seems that there is certainly an eccentric streak at work (parenting as performance art?), that seems like a possibility.