Marc Prensky response to Douglas Rushkoff

Doug has prevailed on me to say something. I haven't yet viewed the piece - I will today. I have heard the headlines of the Kaiser report, but not yet read it.

But let's see...

A couple of years ago people worried about kids staring at stand- alone computers. A couple of hundred years ago, when mass books first appeared, people worried about kids staring for hours at pages . Now people worry about kids interacting with "content" and with other people.

Interacting with "content" and with other people for 8 hours a day--- is that bad? Isn't that what people do, for almost all of their time, via a variety of means?

Now interaction *can* make you sick sometimes. Just hearing certain voices can make me want to throw up, and we may need clinics for obsessive watchers (or cross-watchers) of Fox or CNBC.

But people just love to worry about changes in habits. They worried about writing (Socrates), books, telephones, radios, trains, cars, TV, recordings, sock-hops, music, stand-alone games, Internet, connectivity, interactivity, 3D, virtual worlds, and will keep worrying forever. Some people (e.g. Jaron Lanier) do have some interesting points.

"Being human" is evolving, and will (hopefully) always do so. Because the problem is so complex, there is no reliable data, and almost all "conclusions" are really just hypotheses.

More after I've seen the piece.