My four-year-old godson walks into my home, carrying two iPads
My four-year-old godson walks into my home, carrying two iPads.
“Why two iPads, Ahil?”
“The mini contains all my games — Angry Birds, Temple Run and Matching Pairs, etc. The 9.7 inch, 64 GB one has all my music, videos, more storage capacity, na?
He texts his tech buddy Ishan. Then settles down to download Madagascar 6. His jodidaar strolls in. “Don’t know why you’re still obsessed with Apple, dude. So passé, the Android OS, totally state of the art. Awesome apps.”
“My bad, I’m a Mac addict, so sue me,” Ahil says defensively...
“The Sony range of Xperia tablets, the Google Nexus 7, open your eyes to the future, Samsung is catching up, my bro.”
The Tablet duel has reached an impasse. Two Ninja warriors locked in a viral war.
“So Rahul uncle,” Ahil asks, “What are your thoughts on Facebook buying WhatsApp?
“Uhm...first if you could refrain from calling me ‘Rahul uncle’, it makes me seem really archaic. And secondly, on the Facebook deal, I don’t really have a view.”
“Sorry I forget, Steve Jobs wasn’t even an apple in his mother’s eye, when you were a kid, excuse the pun. Your generation doesn’t really understand this world, na?”
“Dumb decision, dude,” Ishan drawls, swiping his Android, absentmindedly. “Mark Zuckerberg’s just throwing 19
billion dollars at a free messaging service. What does he hope to achieve, even if WhatsApp has added a voice
mail function?”
“He wants to connect the planet,” Ahil says, prophetically.
“The dude’s just pissed off, Snapchat refused his $4 billion offer.”
I think to myself — I was four years old once. How can a generation with single digit ages understand the digital world
so fluently?
“Accha, why are you off Facebook, Ahil?” Ishan enquires.
“My parents think I’m too young to be on social media, plus I’m bored, everyone putting up dumb posts like ‘Irritated’ or ‘Feeling low’ or ‘At Delhi airport’. I’m on Twitter now, so much edgier.”
“Yeah, I agree, Fb should acquire Twitter. That’d be something!”
And I’m thinking, will super tech make them super bright? The age-old argument was always nature vs nurture. Add to that ‘new technology’. Will we soon stop measuring a kid’s intelligence by his genes, but by the gigabytes available to him?
Will the gifted child be judged by his geekhood?
One day these two tech-savvy tots will turn 21. And what will they aspire for if it’s all available, aquirable and at
their fingertips?
“Okay, Rahul uncle, we gotta bounce, catch you later. We’re going down to play.”
“Nice, what’re you guys gonna play, cricket, football, what?”
They look at me like I’m from outer space.
“Playstation 3, duhuh!”
Rahul da Cunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahuldacunha62 @gmail.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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