Technology to Control Technology?

This morning, it was brought to my attention that there is a company that has a prototype pepper grinder (not for sale yet) that shuts down electronics in your house when it is used.

Without going all tech-nerd and putting everyone to sleep, the device can connect via remote device management software (see that alone almost put me to sleep) and will send a message to any of your electronics that are connected to shut them down during dinner.

Wait, you need a pepper grinder to do that? How about a circuit breaker, how about you pull the plug? Better yet, tell your kids, "No electronics at the table."

The company that is developing this says on their website ( http://tinyurl.com/mo9gbn5 ),

"We’ve all had that annoying experience with friends or family where you sit down for dinner, but everyone’s checking Instagram and tweeting about the new lox & bagel Bloody Mary instead of being together."

OK, first things first. Not everyone has had that annoying experience. Some of us have set guidelines for our family (and yes, our friends too, which might explain why we don't have a lot of people over for dinner) that dinner time is time to reconnect with each other after a long day.

The expectation has always been that there will be no electronics (or any books or other reading materials for that matter) during dinner. We eat, we talk about the day, we laugh about absurd things (like what did baby dinosaurs sound like, does everyone see the color green the same way, recounting family stories that sometimes makes us laugh until we cry). We build a shared history during dinner, and other times when we have time to reminisce together.

Dinner is the time when our kids asked questions in the safety of home without fear of being judged. This is the time where a lot of good conversations happened.

Technology can do a lot of great things for us, but it shouldn't replace our roles as parents to our children. We need to set expectations and limits for our kids. They are smart, they'll learn what the limits are, but they don't need technology to do it.

Will they try to push the limits? Yes, but that is all part of the parenting process. We set limits and expectations, we teach our children, we nurture them, and we (are supposed to) prepare them for being adults. If we rely on technology to control technology we are sending the wrong message to our children.

I don't begrudge the company designing the pepper grinder, I just hope that more people than not will realize that they don't need a pepper grinder that shuts down all of the electronics. If this is what it takes to get your family to reconnect during dinner I don't want to know what will come next.

Parents need to parent, children need their parents to parent. Don't let technology replace parenting. When your child scores the winning touchdown, or wins the Nobel Peace Prize, you don't want them looking in the camera and saying, "I'd like to thank the i-Grinder for keeping me focused during dinner."

I have a better idea, let's sell these pepper grinders to restaurants with a slight modification. When the pepper grinders are activated, all cell phone signals are blocked. That way, when people go out to dinner with friends or significant others they can actually spend time talking, and not worrying about who liked their status, or their tweet.

Hey, if it's good enough for kids it must be good enough for adults.