Family tech at turn-of-the-year

"We're swimming in doodads and options - text messaging and search engines, Blackberries and blogs, Wi-fi, cell phones that try to do all of the above, and the promise that we haven't seen anything yet," the Seattle Times reports. Yet, this flood of "convenience" makes a lot of us feel uneasy - our children less so, however. Is this low-grade concern-in-the-background just a grown-up thing - part of not having childhoods with one foot in cyberspace, playing with all the technologies that turn it into a social scene, insta-library, and entertainment service? It's hard to say - there hasn't been a lot of research on this question. Fortunately, someone uniquely qualified - Prof. David Levy at the University of Washington, who did his PhD work at Stanford in computer science and artificial intelligence - is looking into this question of how technology affects our quality of life. For more on this and further links, please see my latest newsletter.