Yeah, my toddler Skypes - doesn't everyone's?

The hubs and I were having a conversation in which I was detailing my latest Skype session.  I had actually never “Skyped” before until a few weeks ago, which I know is crazy since I have spent the last 10 years of my professional career in the IT industry. I knew all about it, I just never did it.  But, oh man, that first little hit of Skype left me feeling like Carrie Bradshaw standing in front of a new pair of Manolo Blahniks. I couldn’t wait to do it again.

So, I enlisted my dad to Skype with me knowing that it would be fun for him to be able to see the K man whenever he wanted.

I had no idea what to expect. I actually thought he wouldn’t pay much attention at all. But he did. I was amazed at the way the little man waved at the screen and then tried to hand my dad something as if he was really able to reach out and accept the offering. And that left me wondering what type of thought processes must be going on in that little brain. What he thought about hearing his name and seeing these thousands of pixels respond back to his babbling banter.

This made me realize something. I am almost 40 and I just had my first video conversation and my son will have had his when he was 1.5.  Which sent my brain into a flurry of thoughts on how he will grow up having video conversations as if it was always so. That one day he won’t believe that we actually had to put a device up to our ears to talk to another person. That the technological advances that he will see in the next 10-15 years will be astonishing.

At 1 he was already an iPhone game master. At 1.5 he has already “Skyped”.  When I was 1, the hottest technology in my house was an 8-track tape player spewing John Denver’s "Sunshine on My Shoulders".

And sure, I took computer classes in high school. But that consisted of unintelligible DOS formulas that you had to type onto the green screen of this big white box in order for it to spit out some other unintelligible formula. Sure, it was actually intelligible by someone, but come on people I was 16. What did I care about these little bits and bytes? And you could only wait so long for those giant floppy disks to finish loading a game on the Commadore 64.

It’s amazing to think that my son will grow up with absolutely no comprehension of not being constantly connected to anything and anyone. That he will never know a day where instant access to music, television, information or people wasn’t as easy as a click of a button. And with all the buzz about the iPad being perfectly positioned to replace the picture book, coloring book, audiobook, TV and educational game player, he may never carry a sack full of books home from school.

Gartner’s latest research report predicts that over 50% of the computers purchased for children will have touchscreens by 2015. That’s in 5 years! He will be 6! I guess I better hold on to the “mouse” as a relic to pull out and embarrass him later in front of all his friends.

It will be interesting as well to see as parents, what pressures we will have to endure as the rapid advancements in technology force us to keep up with our kids – and their friends. I remember being one of the last families to own a VCR.

And what about all the little things that we hold dear, like the bedtime stories selected from a packed shelf of favorite books. Will it be the same story coming from a cold hard device instead of a bound collection of pages and ink?

I wonder what things our parents held dear that we poo pooed as old hat? I’ll have to ask my dad the next time we Skype.


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