Listen to the interview:
[audio:http://www.latd.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/steve.mp3]
Recently, Latitude’s Founder and President, Steve Mushkin, spoke with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) radio show Future Tense about Latitude’s KIDS research initiatives—specifically, about our Children’s Future Requests for Computer and the Internet study published a few months ago in collaboration with ReadWriteWeb.

The study asked children ages 6-12 to draw a picture of what they’d like their computer or the Internet to do that it can’t do right now. Compared with computer’s capabilities now, kids imagined technologies that:

• were more interactive
• were more “human”
• better integrated the digital with the physical world

Steve Mushkin of Latitude

[audio:http://www.latd.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/steve.mp3]
(Click here to listen to the interview on Future Tense’s site, or to view the transcript.)

“What’s interesting, and what we think is a real opportunity, is that children are often thought of in the context of technology as recipients of it—potentially or as recipients of the dangers of it—but our study and our general philosophy is that kids are potentially the creators, inventors and authors of technology and can be working with us in all sorts of interesting ways, rather than being the objects of it. I think it will be a growing space, [...] and we’re trying to fill part of it.”

—Steve Mushkin, Founder and President of Latitude

Preview of Drawings from our Upcoming Study

Latitude recently completed a second phase of the original study, focusing more on children in specific geographical regions: India, South Africa, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile. Results will be published at latd.com within the next several weeks.

By a 8-year old female study participant, South Africa

“My daughter wants a robot to help her pick out fashion clothes everyday and dress her.”

By a 8-year old female study participant, Mexico

“My daughter wishes that she could send messages to the computer with her mind so she wouldn’t have to move the mouse or the keyboard.”

By a 10-year old male study participant, South Africa

“My son wants to watch 3D movies and play 3D games.”

By a 7-year old male study participant, Columbia

“My son wants the computer to be a robot he can take everywhere, with which he can play soccer outside or chess, among other things—meaning that he wants it to be a friend that he and his friends can spend time with.”

By a 7-year old female study participant, South Africa

“She wishes the computer could speak to her—have a conversation with her—instead of typing (which is a bore, she says). She wants to command the computer and have it give her answers.”

Header image courtesy of One Laptop per Child, (cc) some rights reserved.

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