Are Toys For Men Or For Boys?
With so many new "toys" around nowadays it's hard to figure the
aim of the toy market.
My 9 year old son Jack got a visit from Santa recently. Santa
was very good to Jack - he got him an IPod and a PSP - the exact
same as I got. I grew up playing games and totally love the PSP
- it's like the toy I dreamed of when I was younger, and now
that I have my IPod I don't know how I suffered the bus to work
without it.
But how old do you get before you forget about kids toys and
move on to big boys toys? It only seems like yesterday that I
was shopping at kids stores for Jack. The last present I
remember going into town to get him was one of those kids easel
things for doing his paintings (one of these things: http://www.elc.co.uk/categ
ory-530 ). And now, only a couple of years later he's
playing with the same things as me.
Is he growing up too fast? Am I not growing up fast enough? Or
is it just society that is moving so fast for us that age
differences are starting to disappear into the past?
Can technology become the bridge over the generation-gap? Will
the future bring the ultimate toy/gadget that will be the
essential of everyone young and old? I'm continually astounded
nowadays at some of the new products that are constantly hitting
the market. Yesterday I was browsing online and came across the
new Sony "walkman phone" (http://www.sonyericsson.com
). This is where I see it all going - the "everything in one"
phone. The new walkman phone does more than just a phone - it's
also your IPod, and your PSP. The walkman phone has the same
amount of memory as my IPod (2Gb) and can do everything my IPod
does - it comes with a USB cable for downloading from your
computer, and can hook up to play your MP3s in your car, just
like the IPod. It also plays games - games of better quality
than the games I grew up with!
I thought that the PSP was what I dreamed of having when I was a
child, but it was actually one of these things - a gadget that
is everything you want, and fits right into your pocket. What
next can technology produce to astound me?
I think that Jack will be showing me the next thing that
technology has to shock me. When I was a child there were adult
things, and children things. But not today - now we have the
same things; and Jack can beat me at any game when we link up
our PSPs, and he also showed me how to put my music from my
computer to my IPod. Maybe the question isn't whether technology
will bring kids into the same level of adults, but does it put
children on a much higher plane to us??