Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!amdahl!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrpcd!wright!jsloan@wright.UUCP
From: jsloan@wright.UUCP (John Sloan)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Does `computer literacy' destroy `computer rabidness?'
Message-ID: <357@thor.wright.EDU>
Date: 20 Oct 88 12:35:18 GMT
References: <6617@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Sender: news@wright.EDU
Reply-To: jsloan@wright.UUCP
Lines: 36

From article <6617@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>, by elm@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (ethan miller):
> In article <25018@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> karl@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) writes:
	:
> ->His teacher made the observation that my friend and a couple of other
> ->kids from the following year were the last students who had the
> ->`computer bug.'
	:
> Well, a possible reason is the number of computers in students' homes.

Perhaps a contributing factor is that the students' _parents_ are now
using computers. Maybe computers were a whole lot interesting when they
were something mysterious not just to the student, but to his/her
principle authority figures as well, so playing with computers was one
socially acceptable (or at least tolerated) way to escape parents and
assert some kind of advantage over them.  Maybe now that Dad comes home
and plays with his 286 PC, it's not nearly so interesting.

Or, it's possible that obsessive behavior is a common pattern for
adolecents hitting the difficult age of puberty (and boy is it
difficult... I'm well into my 30's and I haven't forgotten). But if
the student is exposed to computers before this stage of life, they're
"disqualified" as a fixation later in life, and the student is faced
with choosing something else, like girls.

Or it could be (and I'd like to think so) that students (like me) got
into computers because it was less awkward than other more social
situations, and today's children are more socially adept then we were
a generation ago. I recall hearing on NPR about a study of children
that went to day care that suggested they were much more socially well
adjusted. Maybe they just don't _need_ computers the way some of us
did.

John Sloan  +1 513 259 1384  ...!ucsd!ncr-sd!ncrlnk!ncrpcd!wright!jsloan
Wright State University Research Center    jsloan%wright.edu@csnet-relay
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