But I don't know. As an old fart, I don't have a great deal of contact with the kids who are programming. I simply assume that they still exist.
And now that I say that out loud -- that's a difference. When I was a kid, the older generations of hackers went out of their way to encourage and support budding young hackers. That's how I got my start. Maybe there's not enough of that these days?
Since I don't know any children programmers, I clearly haven't gotten off my own butt to pass along the gifts the generation before me passed on to me. I need to change that.
It's different now. I'm guessing from your comments you're in your 40s-60s. I'm younger, but from a micro-generation that actually saw how this changed - the adults I talked to at computer shows, game shops, through email/chat/IRC/etc. in the early to mid 90s and before were generally just thrilled when anybody showed any interest in what they were doing because it was so uncommon and not understood that any kindred spirit evoked at least some kind of desire to connect. As the dot-com boom swelled, though, there were a new class of adults who became interested in us and what we were doing: Those who saw us as a way to make money/the wunderkids who 'got' this new hip thing. These are the adults who put together programs for us and wooed our parents with talks about how participating would set us up in life and whose advice all seemed to center around our ambitions rather than our joys. They were panning for gold. Lots of investment on getting us to buy into the business world and puffing up our egos. 'Our' here meaning those of us who were at the intersection of identified as 'gifted' (I tested in the top 0.01 percent in middle school which brought attention) and had some aptitude/desire/knowledge of computers and programming. I found it offputting; I couldn't articulate it then but I'd figured out that those adults saw me as a resource, not a peer/future peer. Now most of the adults techie kids have access to for mentorship are the second kind, not the first.
Now there were drawbacks to the old method and people have good reason to be wary about people wanting to interact with their kids: I'm female and got a really large dose of creepiness once I passed about 11 years old, but I was lucky enough to be a.) gay (so no luring me into just making shit choices/bamboozling me about how 'mature' I was because ew dick) and b.) have parents + an entire extended family of nerd adults to back me up and make sure I knew I didn't have to put up with it.
It's harder to interact with strangers' children now and we're far more risk averse so mentorship in the old way is a huge risk for the older person. Unless said older person is a family member, but tech has grown so much in the past 30 years that most kids who need this kind of mentorship don't come from culturally hacker families.
Which relates to another problem with the transmission of the mindset and cultural knowledge: The numbers are very, very skewed. I had an interesting conversation with one of my cousins last year - he'd just had his first kid a couple of years ago and now he and his siblings are wrestling with an interesting problem: None of them went into tech but they're frequently the only parent in a given group who understands how much of anything works or have any sense of what the recent history of tech looks like. His sister is a hardcore Catholic who runs a farm and homeschools her 9 kids; I guarantee you her kids are the only ones in that community that are given laptops to take apart and are taught at least some basic tech literacy and history.
Even taking something as basic as 'how to grow up online and not lose your mind': I'm 34 and I'm probably one of the first people in the world to have a claim to a true digital childhood. Generously there might be 1000 of us in our 30s with that experience ('true' digital childhood in that digital structures and communities were available and accessible to the same degree or more than analogue ones and that had that access + were able to use the tools young enough to build our heuristics and mental schemas around them as opposed to just grafting them on later). Assuming a conservative estimate of current children who can use the Internet/Web independently is 80% of the population born since the adoption of the smartphone, that's still tens of millions of people. And the oldest of us are still 'baby adults' to the rest of the world: we're barely old enough to be listened to on the basis of our life experience. The ratio of people who have the cultural knowledge to people who could benefit from it is really skewed since the skills have exploded into use but all the cultural and social context was left behind. (Or is turning into some weird post-modern mythos).
Sort of rambling, but I have strong feelings about the experiences of the next generations.
Yes, late 50s. I was introduced to computers when I was about 10 by a hacker who took me (and a few other kids as a group) to play with a mainframe computer every couple of weeks. Since all of us kids were from very, very poor families, this was a particularly incredible opportunity that I didn't fully appreciate until I was an adult.
> These are the adults who put together programs for us and wooed our parents with talks about how participating would set us up in life and whose advice all seemed to center around our ambitions rather than our joys.
I remember seeing that as well. It bothered me a great deal at the time. That sort of thing is career guidance, not encouraging exploration, play, and deep learning.
> It's harder to interact with strangers' children now and we're far more risk averse so mentorship in the old way is a huge risk for the older person.
This is absolutely true, but was a factor when I was a kid as well. The guy who took us to play with the mainframe knew us because he was a teacher in an afterschool latchkey program -- so he wasn't an unknown to our parents.
My daughter (who's just a couple of years younger than you) was the volunteer coordinator at the local science museum. The museum had many programs for young children to teach them various sciency things. Perhaps the way I can give back is to go through them. Maybe start a "hacking program" or something. Seems better than just being a random creepy old guy befriending young children.
Thank you for this discussion, by the way. You may (or may not) have been rambling, but your comments sparked a lot in my brain, brought me a bit of enlightenment, and you have planted a few seeds.
It's interesting having been early and poor (or relatively so), isn't it? We had a computer because my parents were horribly irresponsible and did things like starve themselves and fake weighing enough to give plasma to get money for tech. Grocery budget? Warm coats for our children when we live in MI? NO. Shit food and 10 dollar coats that do nothing. But computers! And we will have sleep for dinner before we cut the amount of Internet hours we pay for!
I was lucky enough to have been born into a hacker family, I can't imagine I'd have had access otherwise since we were rural, poorish, and I was a girl. It definitely made me aware of class issues at a young age.
> That sort of thing is career guidance, not encouraging exploration, play, and deep learning.
Given that making money online wasn't a normal thing at the time, it wasn't even career guidance because none of them knew what a career in Web technologies would look like. It was outright Machiavellian: Cozy up to the kids, see which of them might accept your help to build something, and wait for them to have an idea you think is commercially viable and then swoop in to be on the ground floor. A lot of fake interest in you, a lot of fake emotion. But yes, now it's very much career guidance. "Maximize your earning potential!"
> The guy who took us to play with the mainframe knew us because he was a teacher in an afterschool latchkey program -- so he wasn't an unknown to our parents.
That's part of what makes it harder: The people with tech skills aren't in schools showing 10 year olds around. They aren't doing what my mom did and going to the local elementary school so the 6 year olds can learn to use the computers (because none of the teachers knew how so if the kids wanted lab time, they needed a competent adult and my mom was it). They're on the career ladder, and time spent on intangibles like 'growing community' and 'planting trees whose shade you'll never sit in' will not get you promoted. Nobody who can code now is encouraged to go into teaching. So those connections and those lay experts who held the cultural knowledge so the geniuses could concentrate solely on the work are gone. No teacher messing with a mainframe: The school district contracts out its tech to outside companies whose workers never interact with the children and wouldn't be trusted with them.
> Perhaps the way I can give back is to go through them. Maybe start a "hacking program" or something. Seems better than just being a random creepy old guy befriending young children.
You might want to check out your local library as well.
> Thank you for this discussion, by the way. You may (or may not) have been rambling, but your comments sparked a lot in my brain, brought me a bit of enlightenment, and you have planted a few seeds.
I'm so glad! I feel likewise: I've very much enjoyed this conversation, especially since I often feel crazy. I think we need to decouple our cultural insights from specific tech skills and teach them to everybody. Not everybody can code, but my family is full of non-coders who can still utilize systems-thinking to help them navigate the world and who have good trouble-shooting heuristics. A bonus to this would be that parents could identify hacker children much like they can other types of talent such as athletic ability.
Some things to consider are:
- The age matters. As late as 2000 (so kids born in 1995 who still aren't 30), 25% of 5 year olds used the Internet. At all. And an 'internet user' was usually defined with a minimum of once a week (or even rarer) usage. Not enough to really shape your worldview or how you approach problems.
- Most young (early elementary or younger) kids with internet access pre 1997 would only have it at school. These conditions meant most of the children in this age group would have had very close, direct adult supervision the entire time, which prevents it from being a part of a digital childhood since a digital childhood requires making decisions and acting online.
- To be an early adopter of the Internet at the time as a young child required literacy skills years ahead of your peers. In addition, you needed home computer access and the ability/permission to use it independently. To be so into it that you did enough of your socializing online to assimilate this new method of communicating into your core social programming also meant you needed to possess one of the few interests that the Web at the time was useful for. (I really liked anime, astronomy, video games, and programming so I spent a lot of time online).
Basically a lot of people in their 30s used the Internet before the age of 18, but not often enough at a young enough age for it to have really embedded it as fundamental in the same way. For that I think there's a critical period/age limit of about 7. To use the web between 93 (first home access) and 97 that young required skills/intelligence (literacy being the big one, but also simple things like 'hand eye coordination to deal with old mice' and 'knowledge of how to use a browser' that seem second nature now but when you're 6 with zero experience can be substantial), parents with the wealth and interest to have a home computer, and parents that would let you use said home computer for your own purposes/independently. (As opposed to now where everybody hands their kid a phone). The combination of ability, access, and freedom was rare.
I think a lot of people in their 30s and 40s are sort of in between: They're proficient but it's still learned, not hard wired/unconscious the way it is for those of us who were exposed very young. It's the difference between a habit and an ingrained physical task like walking.
In terms of why it matters, some examples of differences I'd consider are:
* Internalizing that independent authorities exist that you can contact that are outside of your adults' sphere of influence. Or read, or watch, etc.
* Internalizing that information is/should be available in your home/private spaces instead of it being something you had to physically seek out.
* Conceiving of ignorance as rude/willful by default instead of innocuous.
tl;dr: Lots of 80s and 90s kids online once in a while and at older ages, very few truly embedded in it the way kids are now due to resource and skill gates that have since been removed (you can use an iPhone without knowing how to read and there's a lot of multimedia online now + most kids can get their hands on a phone).
