Online Parks

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Brendan Woodage
Operations at CyberSmarties

CyberSmarties took a two week break from work recently. After our first eight months of tirelessly working towards our goal of creating a safe space for children online, we decided that it was time for some time off. My colleagues immediately used this time to both spend time with their kids, and visit their parents, while I spent my time off catching up on boxsets and taking trips to my local park.

Now I’m forever observing. I enjoy sitting back and watching. I enjoy learning my surroundings and analysing and understanding who and what is in my immediate vicinity. So although my holidays were spent relaxing, I still managed to learn a lesson or two.

I journeyed to the park five times over my time off. There was this particular spot under a large tree that I went to that was near the playing field in case I wanted to go for a run, but also gave me a good view of the rest of the park. Each day that I sat there with my headphones on, I’d see the same faces. There were the same boys out kicking a football around, the same people walking their dogs, and the same mothers or fathers out with their kids. It was this that got me thinking. As a child I lived in England and there was a park that I used to visit called Victoria Park, across the road from my house. My parents would bring my siblings and I to the park every opportunity they had and it was there that I learned to ride my first bike, where I first went to kick a ball with my dad, etc. I remember wanting to spend all of my time there, to explore the park by myself. But my mother told me that you couldn’t stay at the park forever and that I was not allowed to go to the park by myself until I was old enough. By the time I was old enough, we had moved to Ireland. The thing is that as I watched the people at the park in Limerick, I realised that the same thing was happening here. Kids were having their first experiences here. You could see their love for the park growing. They were building up memories with their parents, learning how to do new things, being social, and having fun. Even the teenagers who were playing ball were having a great time.

And so, this park; in my eyes, reminds me of the internet and social media. It’s a place where you can socialise, meet friends, have fun, and learn new things. But you wouldn’t let your kids go to the park by themselves if there weren’t old enough just like you shouldn’t let kids be on grown up social networks when they’re not old enough. Cybersmarties Fully Monitored System is the age appropriate safe stepping stone to teach kids how to behave, be safe and communicate online. It is the stabilisers of the bike. The kids are going to move on to other social networks as they grow older, and explore different parks. But making sure that they’ve learned the right skills to protect themselves before they venture out into the wider world is a must, and with CyberSmarties, not only do we have interactive games and coding lessons, jokes, competitions, and daily positive reinforcement, but we have behavioural technology to ensure that when the child moves to their next social network, that they’ll be safe, educated, and happy, free to enjoy an “online park” which is creative, nurturing, fun, educational and above all is safe.

Luminosity

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Diarmuid Hudner
CEO of Cybersmarties Ltd.

As a writer I suppose I have always been interested in words, the way they sound, the way they are used in language, their numerous meanings. The word “Luminosity” I came across listening to music by Mark Richter. In the Western World “luminosity” is given its scientific definition which is the brightness of a celestial object relative to the brightness of the sun. To me though its definition seemed a little less luminous than what I had hoped. Until by accident yesterday in a moment of planetary boredom I came across the word in another program about the Urdu language of Pakistan (I shall clear up quickly here that I do not just watch obscure documentaries, I am an avid Games of Thrones fan…Winter is coming….or as we say in Ireland, Winter’s never left).

In the Urdu language, luminosity means the quality of being luminous, emitting or reflecting light. Now this seemed a lot more interesting a word to me as there is something wholly human about that word, not a celestial object in sight. For me humans are luminous creatures. When people are happy, we emit light which affects others. We’ve heard the phrases like “She is glowing” or “She lit up the room with her smile”. To me when people are happy their faces literally shine, it is a natural human instinct which is infectious to all others present. When someone smiles you involuntarily smile back. The same cant be said of scowling I may add, I’ve tried it and it doesn’t work.

This brings me to another point about luminosity and its meaning. What kind of light do you want to emit to the world? Is it a negative light which darkens the mood of others, the kind of light that people are afraid of, shirk away from, do not want to be around? Or do you want to radiate light, making others feel better for a while because you have brightened their day. Let’s expand this point a little further. Imagine when a whole crowd of people emit light of happiness and what affect that has. I wonder can it be measured, the positive effect of human luminosity. At Cybersmarties, we hope that our technology through its safety and creativity allows children that ability to shine and only good can come from that.

Something else to ponder. Another documentary I watched recently (I’m losing my own argument here about viewing tastes!!) was about human DNA. A group of people of different nationalities, of all religions and colours were asked to define who they were, what their nationality meant to them, what they thought about other nationalities. The views were unsurprising – The Englishman disliked the Germans, The Jewish person disliked the Palestinian, The Russian disliked Americans and so on. Then all of them were asked to submit their DNA for testing and the results were very interesting. The Englishman had 5% German in him, the Jewish person was 24% Palestinian and so it went on. In all cases no person was 100% of their own nationality. We are not who we think we are, we are particles of this earth, a celestial object of our ancestors from every nation on earth. I wonder if people would think the same about bombing and killing and invading other countries if they knew they had in fact distant relatives living there. Perhaps we should all be made do a DNA test. In the wake of the terrible loss of life in Turkey and Iraq, I wonder what light the human race is emitting now: is it infectious or infected? So yes indeed humans are luminous creatures but we are reflecting many colours in our light.