Commonplace Pages

Kids learn empathy in part through eye contact and gaze. If kids are learning empathy through eye contact, and our eye contact is with devices, they will miss out on empathy.

At first, I thought this article was going to be about focus and the backlash of the always-on lifestyle. But it was more about parenting and a frightening trend around technology.

And they need to be able to think independently of a device. “They need to be able to explore their imagination. To be able to gather themselves and know who they are. So someday they can form a relationship with another person without a panic of being alone,” she said. “If you don’t teach your children to be alone, they’ll only know how to be lonely.”

And not just alone… but bored. Boredom can lead to thinking… and even creativity.

If you don’t regularly exercise your ability to connect face to face, you’ll eventually find yourself lacking some of the basic biological capacity to do so.

Let’s all “be here.”

It’s all about, how do we get the creative and technology together to really help tell a participatory, interactive, compelling story that goes on in perpetuity? That’s been a core part of our ethos for a long time.

Creative, technology and storytelling.

But within the struggle to reach the market and obtain sustainable business models filmmakers and entrepreneurs find themselves in similar terrain. This common ground presents opportunities for cross-pollination between the storytelling and tech communities.

Marry this with a sustainable and scalable model and we’re golden.

This story from Matt reminds me of a post by Dan Gillmore on Digital Being entitled “What’s wrong with parents helping their children to self-publish books?” Specifically, this line:

What these parents are doing – at least the ones who don’t take it to extremes, as many American parents are known to do in a variety of ways (eg “tennis dads”) – is to encourage their children to create.

I also tweeted this earlier:

As we use to say back in the day, “Would you rather surf the web or make the waves?”

This is the kind of attention to detail that even Apple doesn’t manage sometimes, and we love it.

Me too!

A little late to the game but still relevant.

But in our rush to connect, we flee from solitude, our ability to be separate and gather ourselves.

Q. During meetings, you like to take notes on your tablet, smartphone or laptop. Is that acceptable?

A. “As soon as you take the device out, tell the other attendees, ‘I use my iPad or phone to take notes.’ That way, no one will question if you’re paying attention,” he says.

We were talking about this just the other day. Will giving folks a heads up enough? And also, does typing notes on an iPad seemingly less annoying than an iPhone?