[ExI] toys rewiring kids' brains

[Will Steinberg]

Spike,

No kid keeps the set as is.  We made it by the instructions and destroyed
it afterwards, using the pieces for random shit.  If anything it allowed
cooler pieces to come into our houses.  I distinctly remember finding old
legos at my grandparents' and thinking they were really boring.

Sorry, but I believe I have the experience to reject your hypothesis.
On Dec 25, 2012 11:37 AM, "spike" <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> ** **
>
> We have seen the comments on how video games are rewiring our brains, with
> the modern generation of kids having an entirely different skillset from
> the ones you and I developed in our own misspent childhoods fooling with
> Rockem Sockem Robots and board games and such as that.  One thing really
> caught my attention on this Christmas morning.  The kids all got legos
> (they love those things, as I and their parents did) but there is a
> critical difference.  Now all the legos come in kits that make some
> specific thing.  The kids follow an instruction book to make the set.
> Tragically many years ago, we kids would get legos in the form of a bucket
> of plastic bricks full stop.  I don’t remember seeing any instructions or
> sketches of things we were supposed to build.  We invented stuff.  We could
> stay busy for hours just building random things of lego blocks.  Now, they
> follow as specific instruction set, and end up with a closed-ended finished
> product, with a lot of very specific pieces, rather than about a dozen or
> so generic blocks.****
>
> ** **
>
> Many of us here will spend part of this day with kids, relatives perhaps,
> or kids of friends, so we will get to see what I am writing about.  Now the
> task is to extrapolate what happens when kids who grew up with these kinds
> of highly specific toys do in the real world, where everything is
> accomplished by following a specified and well-documented path to success
> with little room for deviation.****
>
> ** **
>
> spike****
>
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