Toys!
My wife and I were visiting my family up in the Toledo, Ohio region and had a lovely Christmas. My niece and nephew (5-year old boy and girl twins) received lots of cool toys. It’s amazing how much variety there is and how many cool things now exist for exploring the imagination. It makes me wonder how all this stimulation will affect their minds as they age.
Will they be super-imaginative due to their relatively unlimited access to different ways to express themselves? The modern toys have much greater fidelity and flexibility than the ones I had. Or perhaps the plethora of options will stunt their imaginations, as all the expressions of their creativity can be manifested externally, without having to rely on mind’s eye hallucinations to add vivid elements to their creations. Or is the net effect a wash? My guess is that it overall adds to the imaginative capacity of these children and we will see an increase in the imaginativeness of the coming generations. There is likely to be some cost, however. Perhaps it will come in the form of a greater reliance on external devices to express creativity, generating a certain type of dependence on machines/ technology.
I suppose if this is the case, we will already be seeing this in some form in people of my generation (’x’ I believe.), who have grown up with an already much greater variety of expressive opportunities than our parents. And I suppose we do see this.
Anyway, it makes one think.
