Malled Communities

I just thought of a new term, “Malled Communities”…. my definition: a walled virtual or technology-based community that offers many shiny things but like malls it all comes with a continuing cost and little control to the user beside purchasing.

The iPhone Store for iPhone and iPad apps got me thinking about it, while initially it sounds perfect, all these great applications that work so well and usually a nice price… but then again, you find that in your little mall-world you cant do some stuff on your own, else you upset the shopkeepers, nor do they really want to to go somewhere else. Let me give you a couple examples of life in and out of the mall…

Recently on Leo Laporte's show there was a discussion with one co-presenter about his kids buying virtual accessories for some iPod/Pad aquarium simulation game, and how they ran up $900 in charges for virtual merchandise for it… within a couple hours! The main problem here, is it was all too easy for them to do it too… Once the account is set up (a pre-requisite for activating an iPad BTW) all it takes is a click or two to put a charge on your credit or debit card account.

Since it is iPhone or iPad, they cant really get out of Apple's Malled Community, he just has to be more vigilant about what things his kids click on and what expenses they can incur.

Lets rewind to my youth, I got a Commodore VIC-20 and later a Commodore 64, the computers are very basic, but ready to program - for me there was no game stores nearby (or any money to buy any) which meant most of my time was spent either playing old games, typing magazine programs (actually not a bad activity, really, you have to do a bit of work for the benefit and it was building keyboard and some reading skills) or writing some programs yourself. I did lots of programming and fiddling on those computers, never really stopped either. And has become an enjoyable and rewarding career for me.

A whole generation of sucessful software developers were spawned by similar childhoods where the computer wassn't all a “mall” but was also a “playground” without stores and with our imaginations became something even more special.

I think giving kids a Linux box would be just as beneficial, if not more than what we had. First off, lets dispel one myth, Linux actually does provide a multitude of free entertainment, and there are some great games there, maybe not as obscenely many as PCs or on the same class as a $60 xBox game but, then again it's not a $60 game either.

One thing Linux does have over the shiny boxes - is tools and capabilities, tools to develop all kinds of graphics, audio & music, writing, animation, 3D, and a wide range of programming languages from BASIC to high-end C, also it can be readily (and freely) setup as a server in itself, to make a single user development platform or home a home LAN server; stuff usually only rich college kids could play with in the past. In fact like the 80's type-in programs where you could see how the program worked, many of these excellent games on Linux offer the source code so one could explore and actually see how a game a game is a collection of many different things and even how it is written and learn from those as well. The mind boggles at all the things kids could discover and experiment with using Linux over some shiny sealed-up gadget. And at the end they will likely now a lot more about inner workings of computers than most other Windows/Mac using kids.

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