Re: EduFUD: Computers, software can harm emotional, social development

["Brian B. Riley" <brianbr@together.net>]

On 10/1/98 2:50 PM, Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com)  passed this 
wisdom:

>I guess I know too many stone geniuses who've had computers since they were
>children -- most of the people on this list were raised that way, I would
>bet -- to take this crap too seriously, reduced attention "spans" or not.
>
>By the way, "span" is the wrong word for ADD. I was hardly raised on TV,
>much less computers, (I had my face in science fiction books throughout
>most of my childhood), and I've been known to focus on something
>"inappropriately" for hours.

 Ever since I discovered my ADHD some two or three years after I started 
working with ADHD kids in the our school district a lot of things began 
to make sense.  But I came to realize and now make it a point to tell 
these kids that taken as a whole ADD/ADHD is a blessing more so than a 
curse. The ability to hyper-focus on a task at hand gives you the power 
to do in a few hours sometimes things it would take others a day or more 
to do. For the truly ADD kid (as opposed to the culturally induced 
variety) the hell he has gone through and the incredible low self-esteen 
they generally have, just hearing that is often enough to make a radical 
turn-around for them.

>While I certainly have varying degrees of control of my attention, but I
>just don't see that a "handicap" anymore. My attention is event-driven,
>rather than processed in neat organized batches, and I've learned to like
>it that way, even if it did give me trouble when I was chained in the
>aforementioned tower's dungeon for most of my formative years.
>
>Besides, even if computers cause people to have event-driven attention
>rather than in nice neat industrial batches, that's probably a Good
>Thing(tm). Consider it evolution in action.
>
>Farmers and mechanics may need "control" of their attention, but in an
>information "hunter" like myself, most of the people who do anything useful
>on the net, it's a selective disadvantage.

   ... amen!!!


Brian B. Riley --> http://members.macconnect.com/~brianbr
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