[plurgid]

An interesting question I've had recently, which isn't necessarily directly related to the subject of the article is, "how does access to technology affect brain development?"

When I was a kid, my family was dirt poor, in a fairly literal sense. That was the early to mid 80's and while I was reasonably bright as a student, access to technology really did hold me back.

I didn't get my hands on a computer until high school (in '90), and that was a broken C-64 that I had to fix myself. I didn't have a TV to connect it to. I had to earn enough to buy an old black and white TV at a garage sale before I could even get it working.

My whole life I felt that this is what held me back, and so when the time came, I endeavored to make sure my kids had access to technology if they were interested.

But now I see where tech has headed. They've had computers, but mostly pads and phones their entire lives. It seems almost like these platforms have DULLED their imagination to some extent.

I wonder in the coming generations, if we will see some sort of correlation with access to tech in one's formative years. Especially given the intentionally addictive nature of many of the apps that have become popular in recent years. Also as tech has become ubiquitous and cheap, access it not entirely defined by economics anymore either.

Success is far more than raw intelligence. I'll be interesting to see how all of that plays out in the next generation or two.

[Endama]

My understanding is that the strongest predictors of success that psychologists know about are:

1. Intelligence 2. Conscientiousness [1]

It's also my understanding that these factors usually are correlated under 40% as success predictors. Seems that a lot of it is just plain luck and/or environment. I don't see raw intelligence not being important towards success anytime soon but I don't doubt how as access to information/technology increases, that other factors will begin to dominate as differentiating factors.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness

[Liquix]

I would absolutely agree with your hypothesis about the future. Kids these days don't have the kind of access to technology that you describe - the kind of access that inspires you to take something apart to see how it works, put it back together, explore what you can make it do - they have access to polished, streamlined advertisement-serving systems.

These systems (video streaming and children's games immediately come to mind) are designed to keep kids glued to the screen in order to maximize ad revenue. Any other goal is secondary, if considered at all. The genuine sense of discovery and creation which stems from having a blank & boring canvas to paint on has been replaced with stimuli-drenched dopamine-driven curated experiences. No room for imagination, no need for wonder.

[wilsonnb]

The second best selling video game of all time is Minecraft, which was hugely popular among children and probably still is. That game is basically a blank and boring canvas to paint on.

Children with an interest in technology can purchase a raspberry pi for $5 today. They can learn javascript programming without leaving the web browser. It's not all doom and gloom because their iPads don't allow them every freedom that a Commodore 64 might.

Taking things apart and trying to understand their behavior is a natural behavior of children and always has been. Regardless of whether they have iPads or rocks, they will always find a way. I wouldn't be too worried about it.

Also, it's always worth considering that most children don't have much of an interest in programming. In the 80's most children weren't at home with a C64. Most of those kids turned out fine too.

[jghjg]

It's totally different being pushed to be creative by being poor and having to fix a computer than buying a raspberry pi or enroll into a javascript course, these two things will only happen with tech parents, and only IF, there are thousands of tech parents that give ipads to their children

[wilsonnb]

There's no reason a kid without tech parents can't find out about the raspberry pi themselves and ask their parents for one. Or purchase it themselves. Just like a poor kid without tech parents in the 80s could find out about the Commodore 64 and buy a broken one and fix it, except now the computer is so cheap that there is no point in buying a broken one.

Being forced to fix things is one way to learn but it not the only way to learn.

[imnotadoctor999]

But we are in the golden age of SparkFun! There are so many great project kits and microcontrollers that I wish I could've found as a kid at RadioShack.

[conductr]

In your life, those years, it did not hold you back except when you compare yourself to a very small group of people who 1) had access 2) took advantage of said access. I'm imagining you probably compared yourself to the kid in War Games (1983) and wish you had the same access to hardware/modems/etc.

Truth is, at least anecdotally, most kids that had access back then didn't really dive into it. Hacking and programming in general was not something everyone was doing. Your interest alone gave you an edge even though access came later in life.

Present day, I think it's similar but different. Access is very high. Interest is still low, but definitely much higher than it was and increasing. The kids now who grow up consuming apps/social/etc are not helping themselves at all. Just like how getting cable TV "technology" in the 80s helped no one. The kids who regularly use a keyboard are the kids who have both access & interest to actually be a maker. And for most makers, the keyboard part still comes later like it did for you. What has increased is the support system for learning. Schools are getting involved, tons of startups revolve around learning to code, etc and of course the social stigma of being a nerd has flipped entirely. Not only have nerds become cool, or at least tolerable, computers do not necessarily equate to nerd like they used to.

That all said, in absolute terms there are more makers now than in the past and there will be more. Also, I feel, most of the low hanging fruit has been eaten. Which at some point means all these makers will need/want to solve bigger problems than we have to date and this is what's really interesting about the next couple of generations in tech.

[busterarm]

I also grew up dirt poor, had a C-64, etc. I'm a little less than a decade younger than you.

I taught myself to program, but very poorly. I had a reasonably good education through high school, but nothing that helped developed my tech skills. I could not afford an education beyond that.

My older brother was a sys admin, so I got good at that. Started my tech career in support and languished for a decade or so of low (progressively higher) paying tech jobs.

It wasn't until I knew developers in my personal life that I was able to identify exactly what I was missing to turn my programming hobby professional. I filled in all of those gaps over about 3 years of brutally hard work. I quit working and ran through my savings + some debt just to study and build a portfolio. It wasn't until I was in my 30s that I could change careers and do what I'd always wanted.

[jonbigbootay]

What, if you don’t mind, did you identify as your deficiencies? It could be interesting and instructive to others to know how you made it out...

[busterarm]

I would say understanding databases was the biggest gap. It was the thing was most easily fixed and produced the most payoff. Writing my own toy ORM as a learning tool was the thing that made all web frameworks more intuitive.

After that it was more about how to structure code and work with other peoples' code. I don't want to go as far as to say design patterns, but in my hobby days I would just start writing code and then have to do code gymnastics to work around the structure I built. Now I take much more time before I ever write anything to plan.

[busterarm]

Btw, I love the Buckaroo Banzai reference in your name

[ythn]

Nothing brings out creativity better than a limiting environment.

[Xeoncross]

As a counter point, I've always felt that a main thing holding people back was desire & drive. You not having "it" lead to you cultivating a desire and a drive to acquire.

Self motivation > resources

[dyeje]

Really? So, you have Child A and Child B.

Child A - Wealthy upbringing - Always full on nutritious food - Elite, private schooling - Live in a stable, loving home

Child B - Poor upbringing - Almost always hungry, only able to eat cheap calorie dense foods - Public, underfunded inner city school - Shuffled around between foster homes

You think that the deciding factor for these examples would be their desire and drive? I don't, and I think the science out there agrees with me when I say poverty has numerous adverse effects on how a human turns out.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f16e/845b8222cb92541902c19b... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528798/ https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1196/an... https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/policy-brief/how-poverty-and-dep... http://www.apa.org/pi/families/poverty.aspx

[Clubber]

I would say Child B would be a lot more successful if he had drive than if he didn't. Same with Child A. I've known a lot of rich kids that didn't amount to squat. (I went to one of those elite private schools, but my dad was a teacher there, so we got steep discounts).

[Hermitian909]

Sure, but we're not comparing the child to themselves with and without motivation holding all other factors constant. The question is, if two otherwise equivalent children are placed in living situations of vastly different quality how likely are differences in drive going to influence success?

The fact that some poor kids succeed and some rich kids fail isn't nearly as important as the what percentage of these groups succeed and fail.

[Xeoncross]

You didn't understand my comment. I'm not saying that someone who has nothing is better off. I was entirely responding to a 1st-world experience.

I'm saying that the OP is probably better off for having to develop drive to get that computer working than he would have been having it handed to him.

Long after that computer, drive and self-modification is still serving him.

[dyeje]

Fair enough, I just see a lot of the "poor people just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps" sentiment around this site.

[rimliu]

Wealth cannot replace desire and drive. If both kids had these the same, then yes, the wealthy one would be better off. As theī say, one man can bring a horse to the water, but even forty cannot make it drink if horse does not want to.

[s73v3r_]

I disagree. Enough wealth can easily replace that, to where one would be moderately successful. You might not turn into Elon Musk without desire & drive, but you're also never really going to be wondering where your next meal is coming from.

[dragonwriter]

> Wealth cannot replace desire and drive.

Desire and drive are not independent of experience of what happens when you try and push limits, and if you think that things like race and wealth don't impact that in the real world we live in, you aren't paying much attention.

[imnotadoctor999]

Wow, thanks for those references.

[dsfyu404ed]

deleted

because that's easier than writing a long edit pointing out the specific context in which my comment was intended (a context that should have been obvious based on the parent comments).

[s73v3r_]

And I'd take that bet, and quite likely your money, because study after study has shown that growing up in poverty is most likely to result in that person remaining in poverty.

[graedus]

You think it is more likely for a poor person to ascend to a higher class than for a rich person to remain rich? That is surprising.

[moate]

Not the case. Also, motivation comes down to a range of environmental/societal factors. Some quick hits on "hard work"

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-couch/201208/the...

https://commonwealthmagazine.org/economy/sociologist-thomas-...

https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=h...

[lend000]

There's a spectrum. It seems like the highest source of ambition external to genetics is growing up lower middle-class / poorer than many of your friends and neighbors, but with opportunity to succeed. Anecdotal, of course. My friends who grew up wealthy or upper middle class tend to dream much smaller, even if they are only first generation-wealthy / likely have some ambitious genes.

[hwillis]

A lack of desire and drive makes it very easy to lose a lot of money. The inverse is not really true, though. You'll never be able to afford college if you're flipping burgers through high school. You'll never be a doctor if you aren't smart enough, no matter how much you want it.