

My son is mistaking a smartphone for his mother - GiraffeNecktie
http://www.slate.com/id/2269679/?from=rss

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frooxie
I'm reminded of this quote from iusedtobelieve.com:

When I was very young, my Dad was in the Navy. Naturally I spent a good deal
of time asking where my Daddy was. My mother put a big picture of him on the
coffee table, so I could see him all the time, and told me "This is your
Daddy." When my dad finally returned from his cruise, and we met him at the
docks, I refused to talk to him, saying only "This isn't MY daddy. MY daddy's
at home, on the coffee table." I believed that the picture itself was my dad.
\-- Jupiter

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user24
I found this the most interesting:

> My 3-year-old nephew in Seattle offers a window into my boy's future. When I
> sent a video of Luka to my brother, he immediately video-called us on the
> computer with his son on his lap. My nephew wanted to see us right away; _he
> gets frustrated watching videos of family on the computer because they don't
> interact with him. Forget videos; Skype is his "normal."_

(emphasis mine)

The next generation of internet users are not going to simply be used to an
audiovisual experience, but a genuinely interactive one. I say 'genuine'
because for years people have tried to sell 'clicking on links' as
'interactive web'; it's not, in the same way that 'switching channels' is not
'interactive TV'.

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pyre
It's _more_ interactive than 'switching channels' because you can't submit
forms with your TV. Also, you get to set the schedule, not the tv station.
Compared to TV, the Internet (as it is now, or was in 1995) _is_ interactive.
Just because the 'future' is even _more_ interactive is besides the point.

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jacobolus
I don’t quite understand why we’re comparing reading with watching.

Books have always been substantially more interactive than radio or TV,
because you can go at your own pace, you can skip forward or back at will, you
can take notes in the margins and underline important parts. You can set the
book down and pick up another, or look up references when they seem
interesting.

Reading books and letters never got less interactive with the development of
telephones or IMs, which are the long-distance extension of the face-to-face
conversation, and they won’t with the adoption of video chat either. The media
(conversation vs. reading/writing) have completely different uses. Writing
things down (or recording in general) is a way to crystalize knowledge.
Talking in real time is inherently ephemeral and driven by instant reactions.

In response to the grandparent post: sitting down around the dinner table has
always been an “interactive audiovisual experience” (tactile too!) – the
addition of widespread video-chat seems unlikely to transform society nearly
as much as the internet already has.

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anigbrowl
_Eventually, he gave her a peripheral title: "Mammon," a sort of extension of
his iMama. (...) since we were in Paris, [my wife] did ask a French
psychologist what was going on._

'Maman' is the French equivalent of 'mommy,' but young Luka has yet to acquire
his Papa's* bad habit of dividing the world into parts foreign and domestic. I
suppose 'My son is learning to speak French faster than I cab learn to
understand him' doesn't yield the same level of self-assurance as this ringing
denouncement of telephonic inferiority.

* That's French for 'Daddy.' Those cunning froggies, always thinking they're one step ahead of us!

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DannoHung
And here I was thinking it was funny that he was using the name of a false god
from the Bible.

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anigbrowl
Indeed, but I'm not sure one pun rescues the whole thing.

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lotharbot
About a month ago, I heard my son (8 months at the time) saying "ma ma ma ma"
several times, but he wasn't reaching for or even looking at his mother, just
his bottle. My best guess is that he was trying to mimic Cookie Monster's "om
nom nom nom" because he was hungry.

Kids around this age have an extremely limited vocabulary made up of simple
sounds and few syllables. As such, they tend to overload certain words. The
article noted that, for a child of that age, "mama" doesn't just mean mother,
but several things associated with mother. Beyond that, "mama" might also mean
something else that starts with an m (like "more"), or it might simply be
babbling (my son currently says "da da da" to everything he touches.)

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philwelch
There's a reason "mama" has the same meaning in nearly every human language;
it's the first sequence of syllables a baby can pronounce, and in nearly every
culture, babies at that very early stage spend all their time with their
mamas. So it's the natural mapping.

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icegreentea
It's not just "mama", its "mama" and "papa" (sometimes baba... basically the
same thing).

And then Georgian does it "backwards". "mama" is father, and "papa" is mother.

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tome
Nearly: '"father" in Georgian is მამა (mama) , while "mother" is pronounced as
დედა (deda). "პაპა" papa stands for "grandfather".'

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa#Caucasian_languag...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa#Caucasian_languages)

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TGJ
Once you read the article it's shown that the son is not mistaken, it is the
parent. The child is using a word that has 1 meaning for the parent and a
different meaning for the child.

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hasenj
Yea it seems obvious to me that the child simply thinks that this object's
name is 'Mama', and he thinks it's really cool and important because daddy
kept telling him about this Mama object and teaching him to like it.

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philwelch
It takes a level of cognitive sophistication to think that an image on one
object (an iPhone) actually represents a different object in the real world.
It's incomprehensible to a baby, goes without thinking starting at the age of
2 or so, and hence represents a certain intellectual or artistic
sophistication to explicitly call into question later in life:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images>

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petercooper
This article seems quite careful to skirt around how much contact the mother
has with the baby.

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karzeem
Not that this is what's going on in this case, but the story reminds me of how
ducklings can be made to follow anything, presumably thinking that it's their
mother.

Dustin Curtis wrote a fascinating piece a while ago about similar behavior in
newborn seagulls:
[http://dustincurtis.com/how_niko_tinbergen_reverse_engineere...](http://dustincurtis.com/how_niko_tinbergen_reverse_engineered_the_seagull.html)

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ivankirigin
My 3.5 year old son is named Luka, making this a bit weird to read.

You need to limit your personal device usage around kids. It is that simple.
Taking photos might be the best exception: do it all the time.

I'm considering getting Luka a flip camera. That might be a great device to
learn to make digital things at a young age without anything too addictive.

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ctdonath
I've thought a good product would be a real, decent quality digital camera -
kid proof and kid simple. LCD viewfinder & review, 1 button capture, 1 button
review, USB charging (no stupid AAs - nonremovable LiIon), smart on/off.
Something a kid can get used to as a tool, not just a cheap toy, and no way to
get "lost in the weeds" in menus or other discouraging traps or manufacturing
shortcuts. (Anyone wanna fund a startup?)

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nitrogen
Sounds like a still picture version of a Flip Video camera.

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c00ki3s
Ok, I'm really unsure, I was absolutely certain this whole article was a joke.
But the comments don't seem to reflect that. This is actually happening?
Putting your kids to sleep with an iPhone? What ever happened to singing?

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billswift
No one, especially small children, should be subjected to my singing.

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scornforsega
...or maybe the kid thinks that "mama" means "phone?"

Seems like the most obvious answer.

