GUTENBERG VS GOOGLE

We are migrating from the Gutenberg to the Google era.  Today it became very evident in the Googlesque behavior of my eleven-month-old grandson.  While holding him on my lap, I was reading to him the most elementary of childrens books, See The Rabbit by Janet and Allan Ahlberg.  Before I could turn to the first page, the little guy began swiping his little index finger across the cover several times.  He was trying to move from the picture on the cover to the next picture just like one would do with the I Phone.

A few weeks ago, I let him see the pictures on my I Phone.  I swiped my finger across the screen to the next picture and then to the next one.  At age 10 months, he caught on immediately and began doing it.  Then he learned to turn the phone off and on.  Now he generalizes to bigger things.  He crawls (cant’ walk yet) over to the wide screen Samsung TV and turns that on.  As you might expect, he drags his finger across the TV screen trying to change that picture too.  It really is unbelievable how quickly they learn, especially when the technology is interactive.

For now with him, Google reigns!  Gutenberg needs to recover.  We are committed grandparents and will read children’s books to him every day we have him in our home.  When a child sits on your lap, hears your voice reading a book, and feels the warmth of your presence, score one for Gutenberg.  We want our little grandson to appreciate both the written word on a real page and the emergent wonder of today’s and tomorrow’s technology.  As importantly, we want him to be able to have real face to face, interpersonal conversation with others on whatever he reads.  Finally, most importantly, we want him to know one book backwards and forward, in and out, more than any other.  We want him to know the Sacred Scriptures of the Bible, God’s Word.  As he grows older, whether by Gutenberg or Google and likely by both, we will encourage him to take in and consume the Bread of Life.

Train up a child in the way he should go and

when he is  old he will not depart from it.

PROVERBS 22:6