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Remember when you were 16 years old? Now, imagine you are 16 and living in a suburb where your or your friends’ parents think earning between 60 and 90 grand a year is, politely, "living simply". Your high school no longer has funds to teach you anything beyond maths, science and the traditional humanities, so if you want to explore art, design or music then you ask your parents to pay for you to go to a summer camp. The local council doesn’t allow teenagers to hang out in public spaces, for some reason, so you meet friends at home, or get your parents to pay for you to join a tennis club.
Life seems to suck a little, but you have one thing up your sleeve, or, well, in your home. You have access to good technology. your parents know a lot about the latest computer hardware and software, even though you know more, and they can get it cheaper than most people. If your parents have a bit of money, then each family members has the tech they need, and there’s a room in your house with some top play gear. If your parents have a bit more money, then your house will be designed for great play gear to happen.
This is, according to Heather Horst, a researcher at the University of California, pretty much what it’s like for a teenager in Silicon Valley today. In a seminar presented at RMIT on 21 June, she offered us her findings on an in-depth study of families and their homes in the Californian region, where she sought out how both parents and children work out effective family life immersed in new technology. She discovered:
- large tech placed in family spaces, in order to allow parents to monitor children’s use
- new spaces created in new homes for tech: e.g. Rumpus rooms, tech rooms, etc
- others would renovate old family rooms into "media" rooms
- unlike their parents, children don’t consider bedrooms are private spaces, as parents listen in, or they share with siblings. Private spaces for kids more likely in social media sites than in physical spaces
What generated much interest at the seminar was the amount of professional work-life that parents bring back into the home. As work makes its way into family life in Silicon Valley, the boundaries between “homespace” and “workspace” are blurred. Given the amount of time that both parents and children spend on computers and devices, the opportunity to turn the desktop into a family space, like the dining table and lounge room, is optimised.
Horst makes the exciting claim that this reflects images of family life in pre-industrial Europe and its colonies, where trades, crafts and professions were conducted as much at home as in the town centre, where children were involved, and where work and parenting were done more or less simultaneously.
Of course, this pattern is just confined to the Silicon Valley. At home I have a desktop in the study, as well as a laptop. I cannot keep from bringing work home with me, and used to have the laptop in the lounge where I could work, check emails, etc. while hanging out with the kids who are playing on the PS3 and watching TV. Now my daughter is a little older, she needs my laptop to connect with friends, develop her craft on deviantart.com, do research and homework tasks. Our dining table has become a workspace for her, since I’d rather she were online when I’m around than in her bedroom. It means I prefer now not to work in my study on the desktop, but somehow get a few things done at the same table as her. I find that when I do, even though we are paying attention to our own devices, we get to talk a little more and connect than we would if I were in another room. My child’s tech use is influencing my own in the home.