My son was at his mom’s house and his phone was dead. So I posted a question to his wall on Facebook: “We have a chance to review the new Lego Mindstorms robotics kit. Are you interested?”
Eli’s reply, seconds later: “Need you even ask?”
Not really, no. My son and I have been playing with Lego since he had enough hand-eye coordination to snap two pieces together. We’ve been to Legoland twice. I paid for him to attend a not-inexpensive Lego Mindstorms summer camp four years ago. Almost 16 years old now, he told me in July that he was interested in an engineering career focused on robotics. So yeah, I knew what the answer would be. Let’s build some programmable robots, Dad! Woohoo!
What I didn’t realize was that there would be a bittersweet aftertaste to the awesomeness of geeking out over Lego Mindstorms EV3. Helping him assemble the coolest snake robot we’d ever built (or, to be more accurate, watching him assemble that robot) dragged me back into the past more than it thrilled me on the state-of-the-art robot future. Lego Mindstorms is just a year younger than Eli. It is advancing in fearsome capability as remorselessly as Moore’s Law. But my son is growing up even faster.
     |
Lego robots ate my son
No comments:
Post a Comment