We will soon dwell smack in the middle of the Library of Everything, surrounded by the liquid presence of all existing works of humankind, just within reach of our fingertips, for free.
~Kevin Kelly
Have you noticed that the phone icon represents but one very tiny app on your portable device? Calling these multifunctional devices we so love to hate “smartphones” may be why we often find ourselves bewildered, both as user and as parents. Smartphone is default language we’ve inherited that has outgrown its utility.
What if we thought of that rectangular control in our hand as a teleportation device? In the hand of a teenager, home from a long day at school, it holds the power to instantly open a portal to Fortnite where friends are waiting to dive into the fray, or to the Instagram Commons (June 2018 stats=1 billion monthly active users), or through the Facetime app, to have some heart-to-heart time with a best friend in her room across town.
Teleportation device a little too long and weird for everyday use? Let’s try supercomputer for this conceptual experiment. That little device in your hand has more computing power than all of NASA in 1969 when the first humans went to the moon. And it’s getting more powerful everyday with advances in AI and machine learning (more on that topic in a post in the future).
So here’s a challenge: Strike phone or smartphone from your vocabulary this week. Try calling it simply “device” if you need to reference out loud at all, and in your mind, think “teleporter” or “supercomputer.” Pay attention to how you are using this device…are you teleporting to visit friends or meet with team members? Are you teleporting to the cloud to tap into Google’s search engine for research on “fill-in-the-blank”? If you haven’t read my post from last Friday, read it here, or review it if you did read it, and deepen your focus on Content, Context, and Connections as you consider how you’re using your device. Notice how this influences your conversations this week with partners and kids about the tech in your lives.
What I am reading: I am still reading Kevin Kelly’s book, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future. The quote I lead with today is from the chapter, Filtering. Each chapter covers one of the 12 forces. It’s an excellent book. I encourage you to read it (or listen to it—there’s an audio version). It’s one of those books that really helps you to think differently. I’m still looking for another person or two for a conversation about the book. Just read the first chapter, or even reading a review qualifies. Email me (using the form here) and I’ll set up a video call for us.
Speaking of Crows & Ravens: How are you doing on identifying? I’m assuming you listened to BirdNote. I have to say, I had to do some additional research on tails. I can identify on the ground, but was having a harder time with airborne individuals. This page with images and video from Cornell Ornithology Lab’s All About Birds site really helped. I get the fan vs finger feathers tail ID. Can you tell the Crow from the Raven? (Answer and photo credit here.)
