Toy Fair brimmed with techno-toys, ranging from tiny PDA’s for five-year-olds to baby dolls with enough onboard smarts to mug, cry and whine almost like the real thing. Fueled by “smart-toy” research at places like Intel, Microsoft and MIT, chips and software have crept into everything from toy trains to dollhouses. The result is a new era of toys that are increasingly intelligent–and a new generation of parents who are concerned that these interactive toys rob kids of more traditional fun. “You have to ask yourself,” says high-tech toy inventor Steve Beck, “are the kids playing with the toys or are the toys playing with the kids?”
Yet toys will grow certainly grow even smarter–listening, responding, acting out scenarios. The Sony Aibo pet robot, still priced way out of most kids’ toy-chests at $1,500, is a spookily life-like little creature that already enchants adult owners. Given the inevitability of cheaper technology, it will someday wind up in Walmart. MIT researcher Sherry Turkel, who has for two decades tracked the impact of computers on human psychology, is now focusing her efforts on how children’s thinking patterns may be effected by smart toys. As she points out, while kids in years past could take apart a mechanical toy and see how it works, today’s chip-filled toys are mysterious devices that appear to have rudimentary minds. For research, her MIT website is currently soliciting stories from both kids and parents about experiences with toys like Furby and Elmo.
Some of those stories could get pretty strange. Consider Tickle Me Elmo, the plush talking toy that captured millions of hearts over the past few years–and which learned a new trick last month. The version of Elmo sold last Christmas was programmed to suddenly display a new behavior on Jan. 9. On that Wednesday morning, Elmo owners around the world awakened to find that their doll had developed a new spot to tickle and a new song to sing. And more than that: five of the Elmos had special programming that would announce that their owner was the lucky winner in a sweepstakes that included a $200,000 grand prize. (Verifying whose Elmo said what is a little tricky, and toymaker Fisher-Price is still confirming the winners.)
No mother is likely to complain if an intelligent toy offers her child $200,000. Parents and educators do worry about the broader impact of smart toys–the concern that such toys can stunt development of a kid’s own imagination. But there may also be a self-limiting aspect to just how much technology can provide. Toy-industry veteran Al Kahn, the man responsible for both the Cabbage Patch Kids and the U.S. introduction of Pokemon, puts it simply: “Play patterns haven’t changed for thirty years. Boys want to emulate someone heroic and powerful. Girls want something to nurture, or they want to be rich and famous. You can put in whatever technology you want, but if the play pattern isn’t there, the toy isn’t going to work.”
Once we’ve exhausted the limits of computer and robot technology for toys, what’s left? Considering that parents seem to welcome any technologic assist in keeping the little ones amused, can we resist applying technology to another childhood favorite? Pets, of course, aren’t toys. But last week, just as Toy Fair was winding down, researchers at Texas A&M revealed the existence of “cc,” the first cloned kitten. That work has actually been underway for several years, and already hundreds of pet owners have sent on their pet’s DNA for frozen safekeeping at the commercial arm of the operation, Genetics Savings & Clone. Barring laws to the contrary, replacing beloved dogs and cats with brand-new cloned versions could be a burgeoning business by the end of the decade.
The next step past cloning, of course, would be actual genetic engineering of pets. And in fact, such work is already underway. Another small company called Transgenic Pets in Syracuse, New York, working with researchers at the University of Connecticut, is several years into a project to create genetically-modified cats that won’t cause allergic reactions in humans. You can even sign up on their mailing list to be informed when the first genetically-modified cats go onsale. Non-allergenic cats would clearly be a boon to kids deprived of kittens due to Dad’s sneezes. But might some bright tinkerer be tempted to use genetic engineering to go even further? If so, then maybe all the kids who are perfectly comfortable playing with smart toys will grow up to be parents with something that worries them.