As an observer watching Audrey and Edison develop, I can't help to wonder what it means that they are both developing their schemas for the world in the wired world, where exposure to digital content - both real and imaginary - can be conjured-up with a few magic words.
YouTube and the Google Image Search in particular have both played an interesting role already with Edison's development. I present the examples of Santa Parkour and Gorilla Jumping on Trampoline.
Christmas 2009: Santa! Jump!
After having visited a "real life" Santa downtown, we had made the innocuous search for "Santa" on YouTube - intending to share with Edison some of the Christmas classics that Alisha and I grew up with. As is typical with the collective unconscious, however, what the world was associating with Santa at that precise moment wasn't necessarily what you would expect. The number one match on YouTube wasn't the Rankin/Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special, it was a Finnish-produced home-video of a guy in a Santa costume performing the street-sport parkour.
For the next several weeks it was all about "Santa Jump" at the Compton household. Anytime we were near a computer, Edison would ask to see "Santa Jump." If we were out and about and Edison saw any kind of representation of Santa, he'd point and say "Santa!" and then exclaim (or command), "Jump!"
I can't help but think that the the context of these early exposures must be playing an important part in developing Edison's world view. Will part of him will always associate the jolly-old elf as a lanky, running, wall-scaling, obstacle-jumping, urban athlete?
We're going to visit a "real life" Santa again next week; it will be interesting to see what Edison thinks of Santa one year later.
Christmas 2010: Gorilla Jumping on a Trampoline
So far, the zeitgeist of this season has been gorillas, and specifically jumping gorillas. Behold:
As a mile marker of Edison's development, the gorilla jumping on the trampoline video represents a significant difference from Santa parkour in that Edison first imagined the gorilla on a trampoline concept himself, and then "conjured" the video (or more accurately had Dad conjure the video for him).
He is quite aware that laptops and cellphones are magical devices, and fully expects them to be able to produce a picture or video of absolutely anything he can conceive of at a moment's notice. What's amazing even to me is that most of the time, he's right. Here are just some of the things he's asked to see, for which in fact content exists:
- elephant jumping on a trampoline
- robot gorilla
- gorillas hugging
- Casa Bonita cliff divers
- gorilla "shooting hoops"
On the few occaisions where in fact I was unable to find the very specific content that he was interested in (for example a cliff-diving gorilla), Edison looked shocked with disbelief.
It will be interesting to watch this generation of kids grow up who have never known a world without Google and YouTube. Until then, Happy Holidays and Santa Jump!
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