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/cat
egory-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".
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??