We actually did lots of rather creative stuff back when I was growing up: Staging our own mini concerts for people in our building, making a puppet/shadow theater out of paper, using a spinner from a board game to create our own "Trivia" style talkshow where we wrote the questions for each other. I generally had a very social free time - we'd play in the yard with a dozen kids at a time after school, etc.
Some of that is lost a bit with the "instantly accessible anything" Internet access, I guess. Then again, my kids can sometimes also find inspiration online that they carry into the physical world, like finding color schemes for a drawing they're working on or watching YouTube for inspiration on experiments they can do. So it's not all bad.
It's definitely not all bad! I actually think that, with a mindful approach, things are vastly better for kids growing up. You'll make sure they get to keep the baby parts, or however that saying goes, while the bathwater parts can be safely discarded. A little wisdom and focused attention is all that's needed, but hey, those things are scarce these days!
Oh yes. The funny thing is that I would imagine so many more people would look at this incredible tool and think, "wow, now I can get so much smarter!"
Rather, I would have imagined that around 30 years ago when the internet was shiny and new. I know better these days! So many more just want to have the lazy life.
While I was a voracious reader as a kid—substack recently reminded me of my obsession with The Dragonriders of Pern—many of my best memories are making stuff, be it with my Handy Andy toolkit with the blue handles, the chemistry set that folded out into a laboratory with beakers and test tubes (my dad got for me at a garage sale) or breaking model trains or building model rockets. I think it's harder to be a maker now. Might have to get me a raspberry pi and some arduino sauce.
Ooh, I like that mention of the raspberry pi. Eventually building your own local LLM could be a fun challenge, if you're interested. Then, after the apocalypse, you'd be smarter than everyone else!
Dang, I think I just described the plot to Idiocracy.
Raspberry pi can hookup to LLM or other AI svcs but arduino can control physical stuff like killer robots for the end days. Wonder if battle bots is still a thing
My grandson’s high school has a robotics club that participates in First Robotics Competition. It’s not battle bots because not many can afford money and time to destroy each other’s bot. The first 15 seconds is in autonomous mode. I think most bots are just hardcoded but others involve cameras and decision making. It is an international competition:
Yes, but the time commitment is quite large for a club - M-Th 18:00-21:00. The kids clock in and out in order to get credit. The team is one of 160 going to state championship this Th-Sat for the first time since 2013.
Oh yeah, that's a whole different level of focused work that kids don't normally get in school! I remember one program that took us away from classes for one day each week, so we could focus on just one thing for that day. I think that affected me in profound ways, and I am grateful to have stumbled onto that sort of focused sprint.
Reading books was how I learned a lot of what I now know. And my online activity has always been about trying to provide positive corrections rather than negative solutions (e.g. answering questions I can answer on Quora).
We actually did lots of rather creative stuff back when I was growing up: Staging our own mini concerts for people in our building, making a puppet/shadow theater out of paper, using a spinner from a board game to create our own "Trivia" style talkshow where we wrote the questions for each other. I generally had a very social free time - we'd play in the yard with a dozen kids at a time after school, etc.
Some of that is lost a bit with the "instantly accessible anything" Internet access, I guess. Then again, my kids can sometimes also find inspiration online that they carry into the physical world, like finding color schemes for a drawing they're working on or watching YouTube for inspiration on experiments they can do. So it's not all bad.
It's definitely not all bad! I actually think that, with a mindful approach, things are vastly better for kids growing up. You'll make sure they get to keep the baby parts, or however that saying goes, while the bathwater parts can be safely discarded. A little wisdom and focused attention is all that's needed, but hey, those things are scarce these days!
it’s all about how you use the information you can access. if the internet has made one dumber, they did it to themselves.
Oh yes. The funny thing is that I would imagine so many more people would look at this incredible tool and think, "wow, now I can get so much smarter!"
Rather, I would have imagined that around 30 years ago when the internet was shiny and new. I know better these days! So many more just want to have the lazy life.
While I was a voracious reader as a kid—substack recently reminded me of my obsession with The Dragonriders of Pern—many of my best memories are making stuff, be it with my Handy Andy toolkit with the blue handles, the chemistry set that folded out into a laboratory with beakers and test tubes (my dad got for me at a garage sale) or breaking model trains or building model rockets. I think it's harder to be a maker now. Might have to get me a raspberry pi and some arduino sauce.
Ooh, I like that mention of the raspberry pi. Eventually building your own local LLM could be a fun challenge, if you're interested. Then, after the apocalypse, you'd be smarter than everyone else!
Dang, I think I just described the plot to Idiocracy.
Ow, my balls.
Raspberry pi can hookup to LLM or other AI svcs but arduino can control physical stuff like killer robots for the end days. Wonder if battle bots is still a thing
I bet it will be a thing once again soon! It's about to get a ton more interesting.
My grandson’s high school has a robotics club that participates in First Robotics Competition. It’s not battle bots because not many can afford money and time to destroy each other’s bot. The first 15 seconds is in autonomous mode. I think most bots are just hardcoded but others involve cameras and decision making. It is an international competition:
https://frc-events.firstinspires.org/2025/Events/EventList
Kids today get to have robot competitions!
All we got was pinewood derby.
Yes, but the time commitment is quite large for a club - M-Th 18:00-21:00. The kids clock in and out in order to get credit. The team is one of 160 going to state championship this Th-Sat for the first time since 2013.
Oh yeah, that's a whole different level of focused work that kids don't normally get in school! I remember one program that took us away from classes for one day each week, so we could focus on just one thing for that day. I think that affected me in profound ways, and I am grateful to have stumbled onto that sort of focused sprint.
From my perspective, questions are more creative than answers…
Reading books was how I learned a lot of what I now know. And my online activity has always been about trying to provide positive corrections rather than negative solutions (e.g. answering questions I can answer on Quora).
You're always trying to be helpful here, and I've gotten a lot of ideas from our interactions!