raul gutierrez:

The best toys - Tinkertoys, Lego, Play-Doh, Lincoln Logs - allowed us to build and rebuild almost endlessly. With my kids, I noticed that these kinds of toys have become increasingly rare. Lego bricks are sold primarily as branded kits. Instead of a pile of blocks that could become anything, they are now essentially disassembled toys. Instead of starting with a child’s imagination of what could be, play is now fixed on a single endpoint, predetermined by Lego’s designers.

more and more often i feel the same way about computers. compare this to alec resnick's article how children what?:

And so in the twenty-three years since the creation of the World Wide Web, "a bicycle for the mind" became "a treadmill for the brain." One helps you get where you want under your own power. Another’s used to simulate the natural world and is typically about self-discipline, self-regulation, and self-improvement. One is empowering; one is slimming. One you use with friends because it's fun; the other you use with friends because it isn't. One does things to you; one does things for you. And they certainly aren't about helping us to do things with them.