[mindstab]

Seems kind of harsh on the kids. Sure they don't need tech to play and won't notice it immediately but tech proficiency is so important and this day and age and he's setting his kids back with this, I want to say selfish, project.

[zach]

Well, not so fast. There is a certain quality to those who grew up with computers in their home of that era. We could call it being more "hardcore" or talk of The Little Coder's Predicament in today's era.

Take John Romero, who loved playing video games, but didn't have the endless quarters to play them in the arcade. So he started creating games by programming them, playing them and tweaking them endlessly. And that's where he learned game design (he was the designer of Doom and Quake).

This isn't to say that this is the "greatest generation" of technologists or something -- they were merely well-suited for what came afterwards, which was an exciting time anyway.

However, I will venture to say that those who come of age in the early years of a certain technology, art form or skill seem to have fewer limits on their creativity. When you have stood on the shoulders of giants your whole life, you are much less likely to have "ground-level" ideas. You want to program the next great MMORPG, not a game about mutant camels.

So maybe this is a poor technological environment on the average, but it could be argued that it could engender a rare sort of brilliance as well. Since it seems that there is certainly an eccentric streak at work (parenting as performance art?), that seems like a possibility.

[pmorici]

It says they are only doing it for 1 year I doubt one year w/o an iPad will totally ruin them.

"So why 1986, you ask? Because that was the year Blair and Morgan were born. “We’re parenting our kids the same way we were parented for a year just to see what it’s like," Blair explains."

[wheels]

Implicit in your objection are two assumptions I suspect are false:

• That not having access to technology at home for one year will have a meaningful impact on digital fluency 10+ years later.

• That in the technology vacuum no other skills or furtherment will develop which outweigh any minor delay in digital fluency.

I'm far more worried about what kids miss out on by being immersed in (distracting) technology than the negative consequences of them having a little less of it.

[noblethrasher]

Assuming they were willing to continue the experiment, what goes for median level of proficiency shouldn't be that difficult to achieve in a short time. They would probably be better served learning how to operate or program a 1986 era computer. They could still learn about Unix, Lisp, Smalltalk, C, spreadsheets, word processors, (La)Tex, etc. After being exposed to that stuff, they might even be disappointed when they get access to contemporary technology.

[melloclello]

Some of the most interesting and free-spirited people I have known are those who weren't exposed to the internet from an early age (even just folks who didn't start using it until they were 16 or 17).

Starting this late, they never reached the level of proficiency required to close the hedonistic feedback loop and learn how to saturate their minds with awful internet memes (and harmonise with the hivemind's sense of humour). They also never adopted the socially calculating mindset that you see in the kind of person who grew up on MySpace and Facebook.

[heywoods]

I may be ignorant as I haven't been 5 years old in quite some time nor am I a parent yet, but what would you say this 5 year old child is going to lack developmentally after spending one year as if it's 1986 at his home? There was no mention as to whether the children were home schooled or not so we can assume the child is most likely in the public school system.

If their 5 year old is getting to spend half the day in the year 2013 with his classmates, & half the day with family in the year 1986 it sounds like the best of both worlds doesn't it?

[indrax]

Having an Apple ][ for a year would probably be far more educational than an ipad.

[glhaynes]

About electronics and low-level software, probably so. About nearly any other topic, almost surely not.

[greenyoda]

They don't even have to go back to the Apple II: the first Macintosh was released in 1984.

[kunai]

The Mac is/was a competitor to the PC; it's a general purpose computing device. The Apple II was designed to be a hackable computer for hackers while also being terrifically capable as a GP machine.

[ams6110]

You do have a point in that it's a bit unfair to kids to deliberately make them look odd to all their peers, and they likely will rebel mightily at some point, but I don't really think it will hinder them in proficiency over the long term, especially if they've been encouraged to "hack" and be creative in other ways.