It wasn’t all that long ago that those of us who “thought” we were close to the front edge of the internet revolution as CGI programmers looked at mashups and thought, wow, why didn’t we think of that? Not like they were terribly original. Then again, I’ve long said that original ideas have been few and far between in the past few thousand years.
Kids are the masters of the mashup without any thoughts of there being any particular need to connect the dots. Couple days ago, the second of my very talkative daughters (I recall labeling her big sister by age two as a phone bill waiting to happen….) hopped up onto the bathroom scale and said “how much do I cost?” Thinking myself clever, I said “you cost more than you weigh”. Not to be outdone, her retort? No, I cost two minutes!
Somewhere along the way, most of our brains seem to check out of that wonderfully creative mode of mix and match and see what happens. I’m sure science has a really good explanation for why that is. I also know that adorable waif couldn’t care less about science. Why should she after all .. she’s not even three and already knows how to get on a scale and figure out that she costs two minutes. Doubt I’d ever would have figured that out!
