For my brothers kids, i joined Pokémon in late 2016. Ever since it’s become a vehicle to establish leveled communication between ages 2-9.
It’s interesting to watch extraordinary user behavior at the UX and CX level in young children with devices and how well they adapt to them innately and unknowingly comprehend gestural movements that will later become automatic impulsive responses in their growth with devices.
As an interface engineer user behavior plays a big role in my life, and when i see kids at a young age learning these gestural movements without realizing the long term effects both on educating themselves with device usage and psychological behavior i stop to wonder are we subliminally creating mini cyborgs at a new technical level that will be far more advanced elevating the once easy gestural movements obscelete to much more complex ones innately understood and my answer is “ABSOLUTELY”!
I always ask my wife if we ever have a kid, at what age is it okay for them to have a cell phone, because i worry the earlier i start them on a device like an iPad or an iPhone I’m psychologically adapting their brains to think with screens and gestural movements that will later become learned impulsive actions.
What happened to playing outside with slingshots and jumping in the neighborhood creek pretending you were a superhero with imagination?
Do we think it’ll even be what it used to be when we were growing up? I turn back the clock to paintballs with marksman slingshots in the woods to water guns with colored water and capture the flag.
now it’s Fort Night in E Games won by a 16 year old for 3 million dollars lol.
Makes me sad even though I’ve dedicated 20 years to technology and innovation that the reality of this is that devices are overrunning our physical and emotional lives.
just the other day i must have seen a dozen 8-10 year olds at the mall with cell phones and no direct contact together. I watched in the food court as conversations were missing and each of them consumed with their phones, posting on social media and lacking human interaction.
I always get stunned by this behavior. How we as CX designers and claim to be human-centered designers yet when we watch actual humans they display their behavior like Geordi with a tricorder or mini cyborgs!
Anyway, one of my favorite things to discuss is...
I watch my brothers 6 year old playing pokemon then the 3 year old is jealous the 6 year old is playing and then the 2 year old as well. All unknowingly wanting to join the Cyborgs from a game and not knowing it.
Elon Musk said it best...
i worry about this whole Wall-E story line where machines overrun and people are consumed with a screen and not with real life.
What’s it gonna take to get kids re-engaged with reality and not augmented reality? I work in these spaces all the time but to me the AR or the VR and even the MR aren’t the ways of the future. While i have a closet obsession with all of these and try to stay advanced in these fields on the daily the reality of the world is already here, Cyborgs!
you laugh but most everyone is on a sliding scale to some degree as a Cyborg! Our youth far more than we are.
What impresses me is how powerful devices are on a child and an adult and how dependent people become on their devices, bandwidth and social connectivity albeit having a few friends in Pokémon to tens of thousands of bots on social platforms both provide a sense of comfort and diminished real human interaction.
My hope is that the future of devices no longer restrict or even enhance the experience but thread the gap between the lack of human interaction lost by what devices are currently doing.
I’ve tried devices like the Leap One by Magic Leap and while it’s price tag is outrageous for consumer use, the device packs a punch to help create coexistence between the device and the human interaction. While VR traps you in a digital space, and most AR hand held devices trap you to a screen the Leap One is using spatial awareness, audio cuing and z-axis depth of field visual acuity to provide a more tailored experience bridging the cyborg and the human back together in social conversation.
If the future is devices, which technology is winning with the blockchain advancements, the VR,AR,MR race, and wearables, then the evolutionary cyborg is inevitable.
How we harness the Cyborg within us will help shape the Customer Experience. Where Human Interaction is lost, ML could be the answer to evolve it
This article started as a voice about My frustration with kids learning gestural movements at an impulsive age and unknowingly conforming as a future borg for assimilation.
However it’s an ever evolving movement i believe in my sector of work at different speeds. Minority report and iron man pave the future for AR and Pokémon for kids, it’s all perception in the way we create social engagements to process information.
Technology is just breaking the surface of rich data interactions both technically and visually.
I’m excited as always for the future of innovation and equally ready to contribute to building better experiences, but i can’t stop to sometimes watch the behaviors of all these mini Cyborgs around us, adapting to learned behaviors passed down to them from adult borgs. We’re the ones paving the future for our youth.
Perhaps AR with Magic Leap is the comfortable harmony between real life and borg future which inevitably could change the movement.
Hopefully now you’ve realized you want to enjoy today away from devices and you’d like to experience life as a human! Yes you! Go smell the air and enjoy the day!
Would love your comments and points of view! This is a topic I’m quite passionate about and would appreciate any reference material to research and learn from as well as your comments.
