Tinkering now moves to "Meta Tinkering" - as it always has, to some degree  There was a time when Tinkering involved modifying the OpCodes/Circuitry of your Computer - 1950 - 1970s.  Then Tinkering involved programming the computer, with little ability to touch the hardware or modify the CPU, using assembler, compilers, interpreters.<p>The next generation is the creation of Meta-Environments, in which tinkering allows us to go back to first principles, _create_ circuits, OpCodes, and generally understand the Computing Universe from it's bare components - <a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&#38;tid=10218" rel="nofollow">http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&#38...</a>  Has been the most fun I've had in a Decade, and I'm pretty sure any smart kid, around the 8-10+ age, can start to mull through most of it's components.