My boys love 1986 computing
I initially gave my two girls an old desktop computer with a linux on it.  They started to use it before I showed them how and they started figuring stuff out without me and soon I was sitting riveted in the background watching them discover things and trying to learn about computer UIs and work out how they thought.<p>Here's an old blog post about it: <a href="http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/19500788060/my-tech-savvy-generation" rel="nofollow">http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/19500788060/my-te...</a> - I think its a fun read.<p>Fast forward to now; that blog post is hopelessly out of date!<p>I gave them old-but-decent laptops and, eventually, internet access.<p>As soon as they had internet access they stopped tinkering and exploring and started only using the laptop to watch repeat episodes of childrens TV.<p>And now they often want to use their mum's iPad - to play music and watch TV - but they are completely utterly uninterested in tinkering with any PCs.<p>Its sad but its true and I wish I knew what to do about it.