My niece and nephew when visiting me on the weekend, bounded into the study, pulled up a chair and started thumping away (quite literally in Joe’s case) on the keyboard; drinks precariously positioned on the ledge by the hard drive.
I love this and I positively encourage it, but it’s a world away from when we had our first computer in 1985. My sister and I (other brother not yet born) stood well back in awe as no.1 son jiggled away on his joystick (ahem), playing some kind of tennis game which sounded like a supermarket checkout processing a bar code when you switched the game on and off. The computer was definitely his and we were allowed a few goes but only when supervised by him. We wouldn’t have known what to do with the computer if he wasn’t around anyway.
We were a tiny bit suspicious and intimidated by the whole development. Now, it’s their right.
