Certainly this can't be good for the baby?

[manitou]

I was sitting in an airport a couple days ago, and next to me was seated a young woman with a brand new infant in a carrier on her lap. The baby was maybe a week old, the eyes had not yet focused (no 10,000 things differentiated). But the first two things this child is going to see when its eyes come into focus will be the back of her hand holding an I-Phone. She was paying no attention to the child whatsoever and seemingly texting every friend she had.

 

Seems to me the child would be better off if the first thing she saw was the mother's smiling face interacting with her. Are we raising a new brand of child because of the parents' interaction with their gadgets?

[Chang]

I am afraid that this is a problem which adversely effects our every day interactions with our fellows. The person we are with is ignored or paid only partial attention so that we may interact with someone through the use of our smart phone. They have become the new attention stealers.

 

But this is particularly sad in the case which you describe.

[vonkrankenhaus]

Re:

-----

"Are we raising a new brand of child because of the parents' interaction with their gadgets?"

-----

 

We are. And because of things like living in houses, "managed" birth, "education", eating food flown-in from scattered points around the Earth, and all of the other tools of human domestication and selective breeding.

 

The interesting thing about computers and "smart"-phones is how they have funneled not just people's communications, but their sensing and communication ability, into and through proprietary devices and networks and hardware/software interfaces that change so many things about the way people interact and who is privy to and involved in people's communications.

 

Despite marketingspeak like "information superhighway" and so forth, the available information and manner of interacting is being effectively reduced. In person, you can see my expression, gestures, and hear my tone, emotions, and a whole range of things humans do in communicating, some of them fairly subtle. But when we communicate through an email application, much of this is removed. Texting on a phone reduces even further. From email to Twitter we see a further reduction - so now we not only don't have even what we would have just standing next to each other, but we've gone from large text fields in email to tiny text submission boxes with character limits.

 

The networks and associated data-mining capabilities expand greatly while all this reduction is happening, so that we are on a huge information "superhighway", but we are, increasingly, "driving" on it in a thimble.

 

It's almost to the point where our communications reveal this increasing amount of data about ourselves, by default, including our location, contacts, etc - but these same communications actually involve communicating less and less with each other in terms of type and amount of data.

 

And we are communicating with each other through devices designed, and networks owned, by "someone" who is now party to our communications on both ends - both in shaping or "tailoring" (via devices and software), and recieving (all of this data).

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[silent thunder]

I was sitting in an airport a couple days ago, and next to me was seated a young woman with a brand new infant in a carrier on her lap. The baby was maybe a week old, the eyes had not yet focused (no 10,000 things differentiated). But the first two things this child is going to see when its eyes come into focus will be the back of her hand holding an I-Phone. She was paying no attention to the child whatsoever and seemingly texting every friend she had.

 

Seems to me the child would be better off if the first thing she saw was the mother's smiling face interacting with her. Are we raising a new brand of child because of the parents' interaction with their gadgets?

I don't think so... before phones, she would have likely just had her nose buried in a few magazines.

Our distractible nature hasn't changed, just the gadgets available to feed the process.

[manitou]

Nice response, Mr. VK! And funnily enough, our gadgetry allows us to communicate with each other instantaneously (if we were in the Chat room), although we may be on different sides of the planet. Seeing as gadgetry is making the world 'smaller', there is apparently a good side to it as well. Look at all the social movements happening across the world now that wouldn't be nearly as effective if the word couldn't get out via internet and social media.

 

I'm of the thought that time is curved and all has already played out; our concept of linear time is an illusion, as Einstein and others have proven the curvature of time. A good analogy being that the horizon appears as flat, although in reality the earth is round. So I'm wondering if there isn't a pragmatic reason why our children are being subjected to gadgetry at so young an age? I keep thinking that the world must return to a Oneness of sorts - the form of which I cannot see - but a Oneness none the less. Certainly the internet plays a huge part of this, if this is the case.

 

Maybe the children of the future (such as the infant I was seated next to) will be needed to perform a particular function having to do with technology. If, as in the past, an infant (who is born of the One cell, which divides into two, which produces three, etc.) sees the I-Phone before it notices its mother and father's face (the metaphor here being the mother and father as the 'two and the three'), the infant will subconsciously perhaps place more emphasis on the gadgetry rather than the human contact with mother and father. Surely there must be a viable reason for this, which we cannot see yet.

 

As above, so below. Microcosm / macrocosm. It has occurred to me recently that the infant, at birth, is a perfect metaphor for the function of the Dao. And the concept of the Universe. All is Mind. All is merely perception, each of us living in a separate world of perception. Awareness is he Thing. Just Awareness. The infant is perhaps aware of itself at birth (not in a self-conscious way, but in an I Need to Poop and I'm Hungry way). The infant's awareness expands to the two and the three, as in the beginning chapter of the TTC, because it sees and interacts with his parents. The remaining 10,000 things stem from that, a little at a time.

 

Maybe we can't place a 'good' or 'bad' on this - I'm questioning how I titled the thread (Surely this can't be good for the baby?) It just IS, I guess. But boy, things are changing at the speed of light, it seems.

Edited December 15, 2014 by manitou

[manitou]

I don't think so... before phones, she would have likely just had her nose buried in a few magazines.

Our distractible nature hasn't changed, just the gadgets available to feed the process.

That may well be true. But I think the Extent has changed.

[forestofclarity]

Maybe mom was just taking a break.

[manitou]

Maybe mom was just taking a break.

I hope so. Hopefully she's not addicted to her I-phone.

[Michael Sternbach]

Maybe the children of the future (such as the infant I was seated next to) will be needed to perform a particular function having to do with technology.

 

[IntuitiveWanderer]

 

ROFL!!!

 

Damn existential nazis man....they always wanna be specialz...

Edited December 15, 2014 by IntuitiveWanderer

[johndoe2012]

Maybe the mother was born by a woman who couldn't love her? Thus the problem is inherited.

 

A closed heart unfortunately seems like the default modus operandi on Earth.

[Michael Sternbach]

A closed heart unfortunately seems like the default modus operandi on Earth.

 

Is that the reason why you have a Black Hole as your Avatar?

[Nungali]

IMO it all went down the drain quiet a few years ago.

 

I go down to the river (years ago now) as the boys were having a sleepover camping party, as they used to ( at around 10 years old), I would sit by the fire with them and they would beg me to tell them scary stories.

 

This time they have set their sleeping bags up in the riverside meditation sanctuary (as it has a power point) and are all in various separate groups playing and watching video games. Me: "No campfire tonight? .... Anyone want to hear a story ? .... It will be real scary ..... or we could go and spotlight some eels ... anyone .... ....... hello ? ...... hell-ooo-ooh ??? ... "

 

[Nungali]

Maybe the mother was born by a woman who couldn't love her? Thus the problem is inherited.

 

A closed heart unfortunately seems like the default modus operandi on Earth.

 

 

here you go ;

 

 

 

[Michael Sternbach]

Chris, this would make a nice substitute for your Black Hole.

 

 

here you go ;

 

 

 

[thelerner]

Maybe the mother was born by a woman who couldn't love her?

Geez, give the woman a break. I'd be willing to bet people who've had babies are less judgmental then those who've never cared for an infant, especially from a very short snap shot of life. Even the best mom when caught at the wrong moment will look bad. Even if you're a good mother or father, babies will cry and you won't always be there 24/7 perfectly.

 

The reality tends to be the more kids you have, the more you realize you don't have to be connected to them 24/7. You can do a few things for yourself and you don't need to be totally anal. For our first we recorded every feeding, every poop, every moment they'd fall asleep. Kept everything meticulous and clean.

 

By the third, people would tell us, your kid's crawling in the mud and it looks like he's eating worms there. And we'd be, 'Meh, that's fine'.

 

You don't get a manual with the birth of a child. You go in a rookie, yet some how they tend to turn out okay. Least ours have.. so far.. so good.

Edited December 15, 2014 by thelerner

[soaring crane]

Are we raising a new brand of child because of the parents' interaction with their gadgets?

 

well, in the bigger picture, yeah, but I don't think the baby in question was suffering any loss.

[manitou]

 

well, in the bigger picture, yeah, but I don't think the baby in question was suffering any loss.

I'm sure you're right, SC - I was just looking at it from the point of the eyes not being able to focus yet. I've not had kids so, Lerner, you're probably right about one such as me not giving her a break. I was giving it a Taoistic metaphor, as per the OP.

Edited December 15, 2014 by manitou

[dawei]

Take a snapshot in any moment in time of you... happy, sad, upset, angry, etc... the baby will see it. They take note but let it pass within milliseconds...

 

At an airport... is that everyday life experience?

 

It is part of the whole experience.

 

Let's not create some form of utopia for babies... they can more easily view and accept it all... than you and me... they are ahead of the curve

[manitou]

Point well taken, Dawei. But are you sure they will let it pass within milliseconds, or will that anger become part of their post-natal conditioning?