scary weird
Saturday, March 8, 2008 at 08:08PM 
basking in the 'glow" • click to embiggenThis Saturday evening entry may seem like a 'proud grampa' boast, but it's not really intended to be so. Rather, I am curious to know if my grandson Hugo - he's 42 months old - is a bit of an anomaly or if he's just plain average in this day and age.
Hugo stays at out house every other weekend - we love the time spent with him and mom & dad love the 'time off'. Hugo loves it here so much that mom & dad don't tell him it's a Papa weekend until I'm on my way to pick him up because, if he knows too much in advance, he stands at the front window for hours looking for Papa. So, it seems everyone is happy with the arrangement.
That said, this picture was taken this AM. In his young life, Hugo has access to 4 computers - 2 at his house, 2 at ours. He started sitting at the computer (at his house) to watch movie trailers about 2 years ago. At that time he mastered the return key which functioned as the 'play again' button. He also learned the volume keys as well.
His primary use of the computer now is watching videos on YouTube - mostly power rangers, transformers, and spiderman. After he turns the computer on, he knows how to start Safari and go to YouTube on the 'favorites' bar. Because we have entered 'power rangers' in 'search' on YouTube previously, he has mastered typing a 'p' in the search window and hitting the return key after the phrase appears in the window, which takes him to a list of videos.
He also uses this 'p' search technique when he gets, as he puts it, 'lost' on some video tangent.
He knows how to click and drag or use the up/down scroll keys to peruse the various offering and select the ones he wants. He uses the 'back' arrow in the browser window to backtrack, the volume keys, the pause key (to stop a video, come find me to show me something "really cool"), click and drag the progress slider to go back to see a segment again, amongst many other basic computer skills.
About 8 months ago he started in on video games - not kid's games, no, not for him ... it was Grand Theft Auto and some kind of Ninja fighting game. Now he's up to Hulk, War of the Monsters, Power Rangers and a few others. Some how he has learned how to navigate through many levels of set-up options to set the games up exactly how he wants them. Add to that his uncanny both-handed dexterity on the control thingy - all the buttons and levers - and he can occupy himself for hours.
As I am typing this entry, he is downstairs entertaining 3 college freshmen and 1 high school senior with his video game prowess. (Aside: Normally seizure girl (home on Spring Break) and her friends would be out and about on a Saturday night but the roads are so totally iced over that driving a car is more playing a demolition derby video game than we would like.) They are amazed.
Hugo's a very smart kid but I am assuming that there are others out there like him, computer / video game wise. But I am also assuming that there are a lot who aren't.
Now, my question is this - I am I witnessing the start of the new haves / have nots world. A world of kids with early-age unfettered access to computer technology vs. those kids who do not have that same access?
His early-age skills seem very weird to me. The idea of a new age of haves / have nots scares me.
PS lest anyone think otherwise, Hugo is not just a 'pinball wizard' - we went downhill skiing today as well.
Reader Comments (2)
Hugo sounds like a pretty bright kid. There are people worried about ensuring child has access to technology... see One Laptop Per Child at http://laptop.org/. Cheers, Eric
I say give him a camera and lets see what he does, it would make a good post.