Last weekend I went to a technology fair – TechComunidad – in south Austin for the Statesman.
It was unlike any technology fair I’ve ever been to. Instead of displaying the newest high-tech devices to those on the cusp of the next generation of the i-whatever, instead it focused on the basics.
There were really two events happening simultaneously. One for children and one for adults. The difference for this technology fair was that most of these people had never sent an email, used an internet browser, and some had never even touched a keyboard.
Adults crammed in to tents by the dozen to create their own gmail account while kids recorded their own guitar music on to tablets and learned how to use an online app to edit and save their creations.
There was one girl who struck me – Gloria. When I walked in she had headphones on and she was working on a laptop, editing her music. Then she paused from her work and picked up a nearby tablet and began to take pictures as I did. She was six-years-old. All of a sudden I felt my job might be threatened by a first grader.
It was pretty incredible to see these kids, most of them under the age of seven, not only working with technology, but creating bilingual programs. And their parents were caught up on 20-30 years of technology in one afternoon.
Anyway, here are some of the photos.
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