The Google Babies - Who needs Grown-Ups?

My brother's grandson, 7 years on this Earth, may ask "How do I spell ...?"  but beyond that, "grown-ups" in his life have "measured" Trustworthiness, and the real way of getting answers to a child's questions is the search engine.'

We took the laptop on vacation with the idea of viewing videos during the drive, and between the hand-held game and the scene selections to watch Jim Carey antics for the thousandth time, I observed the manipulation of the screen with a delicate but authoritative "touchpad" technique.

Nick knows quick, certain paths to revealation as he skillfully navigated through screens that represented "worlds" in his game and movie.  But the moment he asked an assist on spelling as he loaded up Google, my take-away evolved.

Aside from his go-to technique of locating a kid's game channel, the child could "snip" the adult assist for the "close enough" spelling of words like "cloud" and other things that trigger imagination, and with a tip and a touch, the array of answers to his questions manifest with links to lead him as deeply as he wishes into the results of his inquiry.

No longer to be gently prepared, shielded or fairy-told the Adult-wants-to-shield-you-from-harsh-reality version of the facts, the youngest children can, if the computer is at hand, elect to bypass, or at least incorporate a secondary source, for answers to their "Where did that come from?" questions.

Limited only by their reading skills, kids can discern when well-intentioned PaPa didn't 'quite' deliver on that last question and take it to the Oracle for verification. 

Where to begin? 

A computer class I had at Continuing Education Community College spent a session relating the phenomenon of "PACKED ARRAYS" and although it was in the 90's that I first looked at it, the recollection of the teacher's sketch suddenly "flashed back" to me as I allowed my "long drive relaxation mode" to consider how a life can be randomized by the links the search results present.

Choice, more than ever, now presents a considerable Vista of options defined as:  "One-Step-Leads-To-Another." and the littlest citizens can be our cushion of resistance between a generation raised on Television and the Up-And-Comers with the sattelite and cable Windows into realm to be chosen, mastered and levelled up.

All THUMBS?  The texters, twitterers and helicopter kids are connected above and beyond what we once thought possible.  But as we saw with the election of Barak Obama, the superficial savvy babies in technology and communication, remain, just the same, unskilled in the physical realm where stuff takes time, teaches patience and extracts a price for revealation.  If one can do it in the electronosphere - rest assured - it can be done with reality-based hard copy.  And when the imagination returns to "Earth," the desire for an environment that supports and protects evolution, stability and a secure place to store your "stuff" inevitably demands the solutions never addressed by the untested academicians they put in this White House.

Just as there are places to stash, there are places to hide worlds never intended for the mainstream.  The gritty, sinister basements of humanity lurk - also - in the Googlies.  How will kids know when they uncover one, as they navigate the SearchResults?