Interesting, but the comments have some very good points. For example: are they sure they were used by the children, not their parents? Was the hacking done by a child, or by someone else?
Some of the replies to that article are rather startling. It just goes to show that no matter what you do, someone will find fault with it, but good looks to these researchers. I always learned more on my own.
This is like super cool, but I am a little worried about the implications that the children were basically involved in an experiment without consent from anyone which is an ethical problem. If anyone got hurt
during this sort of thing, it could be bad, especially if they didn't know anything about them and used them in a way that could cause electric issues.
That sort of thing is only really an issue in the English Speaking world (North Am, UK, Oz, NZ) - there are all kinds of tests done in Europe without knowledge or consent.
Example: study of correlation between migraines and a hole in the heart. Plug the hole, migraines get better. Except there were some unsuspecting controls who thought they had the operation and didn't.
Unauthorized testing used to happen more often. Funny story: When the Vanderbilt charity clinic testing story broke, one of the test subjects had grown up to be a doctor and was actually teaching at Vanderbilt.
Reading the story, Mama said there were lots of times that they got random "treats" at school, such as apple juice or cookies. I told her "This explains a great deal."
Yes. The US (and the rest of us following after) have become a nation of sue-ers. People curtail certain activities when they have a reasonable expectation of being sued.
I understand the ethical concerns, but would the experimenters been at fault if one of the children decided to use a tablet to whack others over the head? It's hard to draw the line between reasonable concern +
Oh, you mention experimenting on children (even when it's beneficial and harmless) and some people go ballistic. People lose IQ points over "children!" sometimes.
These kids live in a very dangerous world, risk of dying as a child is huge. Life expectancy is not really great. Those tablets can actually change that for the better. This is the world they will be living in.
