By Limor Shiponi
“My father says that in ten years from now, we won’t have to talk anymore. Using special technologies, we’ll just have to think and things will happen.” Coming from a 14 years old gifted teenager, who said it during a storytelling session for young writers. All the other participants, aged 14 and gifted – nodded in approval. The idea seemed perfectly reasonable to them.
None of them stirred up the question, “but who will be operating and controlling that technology?” None of them came up with any second thoughts about what will happen to freedom of speech.
“The boy’s father told him grandma has died. That was of course sad,” said one of the boys while telling us a story. “Then the boy remembered the book she gave him when he was much younger, and found great significance in realizing he remembered the book, of all things, when his father told him the sad news. He understood the book was pretty important to him and that remembering it pointed at a significant connection between him and his grandmother.”
Huh?!
The group was ‘respectable’ and disengaged.
“You mean there is a ten years old boy sitting at the breakfast table – can you see him? Can you see his father? Can you see the kitchen, the food on the table?” I asked. “Yep, now I can,” he answered. “Now his father looks at him and says ‘grandma died last night’. What happened next?” “The boy felt something rising in his body, making its way fast into his throat. He pushed back the chair and ran up to his room, crying all the way. When he reached his room, he threw himself on the bed, still crying. Then he saw the book she gave him when he was five. He got up, grabbed it, and returned to the bed hugging the book, still crying over it. His mind was empty.”
The group was a little less ‘respectable’ and very engaged.
Bad news – kids’ brains have been messed up. Good news – it’s pretty easy to fix.