The Curiosity Cycle: Preparing Your Child for the Ongoing Technological Explosion

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The Curiosity Cycle: Preparing Your Child for the Ongoing Technological Explosion

A disclaimer: the author sent me a free copy of his book in electronic form to review.

I really enjoyed reading this book. The title is very descriptive of the content – this book provides practical advice on how to prepare your child for the modern technical world by igniting their curiosity. There are three main sections to The Curiosity Cycle:

  • “The Curiosity Cycle,” which describes Mugan’s view of how curiosity affects people through their life,
  • “Children and Their Embodied Selves,” which provides suggestions for increasing and improving curiosity in children, and finally
  • “Computers and the Future,” which emphasizes the growing importance of curiosity as our world becomes increasingly digitized.

The curiosity cycle is introduced early in the book, on page 12:

The curiosity cycle

The curiosity cycle

The rest of the first section of the book examines the cycle in detail, especially how children create and use models of the world. While I’m not sure I agree with all the examples and ‘evidence,’ I do think the author makes a strong case for the importance of helping children build world models and how these models, and related model testing, encourages curiosity.

Ultimately, we don’t know what direction technology will take us, but we do know that increasingly rapid change is coming and that change will require engaged curiosity to understand it.

The second section delves into how the brain works and why our ability to perceive the world through our senses drives curiosity. There are some personal anecdotes in this section that lend personality to the writing. This part attempts to provide a number of ‘recipes’ for important areas for parents to help their children grow and understand, such as “Arguing to Agree.”

The last part of the book positions the curiosity cycle in the modern world, where the rate of change is ever increasing and machines take over work at the lowest levels of endeavor. “Children must also be prepared for the new dangers of this future.” (p. 73) Mugan notes that children must become aware of privacy issues and all the other side effects of being online. I think the author is correct in assuming our future brings back the individual as artisan – “… one could consider blacksmiths to be the application developers of the Middle Ages,” and today we can all be, once again, blacksmiths of music, writing, almost anything digital.

I really enjoyed reading this book; the writing style is clear and there are some wonderful turns of phrase.  I think it would be worth reading if you have a young child, or if you manage others – curiosity is a key value in our world today and I don’t think you’re ever too old to learn. “Ultimately, we don’t know what direction technology will take us, but we do know that increasingly rapid change is coming and that change will require engaged curiosity to understand it.” (P. 102)

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One Comment

  1. Alex
    8:13 pm on March 23rd, 2012

    The return of the artisan. I do like the sounds of that!

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