Technology and Early Adopters

To truly understand how much life has been changed by technology, consider this: my 17 month old grandson Nathaniel understands how to use an iPhone. He knows how to select apps, scroll through photos, and start videos. 

His small motor coordination isn't always quite able to do precisely what he wants, but he definitely knows how to do what he wants. At 17 months.  

This is frightening and inspiring at the same time!  I've been a computer user for more than 30 years, and I always knew that small humans were little sponges in terms of knowledge acquisition.  While there have been jokes around for years about the need for older people to seek assistance from teenagers when needing to program a video recorder (which no one even uses anymore), this latest realization just amazes me.

I recorded a video of Nathaniel playing hide and seek the other day, and he loves to watch stuff like this (starring him) over and over.   He wanted to see my iPhone and watch himself laughing and giggling in the 30 second clip.   And when the clip ended, he didn't hesitate to reach out and poke the tiny play icon to run it again.  Sometimes he hit the icon, sometimes he missed, but he sure knew how to get the video to play.

He seems to represent early adopters, or perhaps, more accurately, early adapters.