“What will happen if children grow up interacting with robots as peers and even friends because of the robots’ sociality, but also objectifying if not dominating the robots because the children understand that the robots are a human technological creation? Imagine, for example, if an 8-year-old’sbest friend is a social robot. The child plays with the robot everyday and goes to it for comfort and companionship. The robot always does what the child wants and the child never needs to accommodate to the social interests and needs of the robot. Does that situation put into motion a master–servant relationshipthat we would not want to reify”

I was taken back to the film “Her” and the reality that it is very possible that we will get to a point where the line between robot and human is so blurred that the effects of a child treating a robot as less than human could effect the way said child interacts with humans. A truly fascinating idea and a terrifying one because it is very likely that such a possibility will not stop technological developers from developing the technology that could lead to such a phenomenon. So I guess I am pointing out a question that we keep confronting- technology is changing and sometimes not for the better, how do we keep up and prevent the detrimental effects from harming children in the process?

The first being that a “smart” toy is capable of creating and communicating imaginary situations to third parties without the child’s help. While the child could pick up communication skills by mimicking the linguistic structures that the “smart” toy uses. However, this could have several pitfalls. The first being that a “smart” toys script may be, intentionally or not, syntactically or logically flawed. By simply mimicking structure, a child will internalize and employ these same errors. Another downside of children mimicking a “smart” toys response structures is the child could fall into the trap of wrote learning as opposed to gaining a deep conceptual understanding of why a given response is appropriate and complete to some query. We saw in the Hirsh-Pasek reading from last week that the process of abstraction and mapping ideas to symbolic structure, in this case grammatical ones, is the best way to truly learn and understand a concept.

A second area where “smart” toys need to be cautious is the degree of scaffolding they provide to play. Pellegrini points out that scaffolded play is useful in that it allows for multiple parties to immerse themselves in imaginary situations for longer. This is turn induces the practicing of group management skills like cooperation. However, over scaffolding play can be isolating, not requiring the participation of others which largely nullifies the positive incentives that existed for fantasy play in the first place.

Since crafts in general and fashion specifically are so deeply tied to the female realm, I started wondering about ways that textile construction could move into a less gendered space. A tool like the LilyPad Arduino seemed like a promising way to make “soft wear” more universal, but a quick Google search revealed that the “LilyPond” website is no longer active and there seems to be little news from the formal community. Considering the long history of embroidery and sewing long before Fröbel, it seems unlikely that it will disappear in the future, but a great game, platform, and most importantly, an active community, could go a very long way in supporting more widespread adoption.