One of the greatest challenges coming our way because of the immersive nature of technology will be for us to collectively redefine what it means to “be” somewhere.

Raising children today is as hard as it’s ever been. Here are 8 parenting tips guaranteed to make your efforts easier (or at least give you some things to consider as you try to make your peace with cellphones and gaming consoles). 

Today’s parents are working out challenges as pioneers in a new digital frontier without guides or mentors and with a limited sense of the topography. To guide a child’s development today, parents need to engage with their children’s digital realities and teach them concepts there just like they would the physical world. 

A child’s digital dossier is created long before they are able to consent to their “image” being distributed to a global network of friends, family, and possibly strangers. Globally distributed and then integrated into a digital archive that stores, remembers, and shares everything across a lifetime. 

Humans have been creating children and struggling to raise them right for millennia. The overarching main goal that whole time? To create and refine a child who won’t embarrass you. And will take care of you in old age. That was true 100 years ago and it’s true today. 

Walk into the future with technology and not under its command.

It’s 2017, of course you are. We are all TechnoHumans.

I have been thinking recently about what my world will be like when I stop having the day-to-day conversations that currently fill in the small spaces of life.

I often ask people to consider the Selves they have that live outside their bodies.

Today a question based on a slide I have in my current keynote: what will the humans who are the products of big data be like when they get older?

How old were you when you got your first cell phone?

How long before Amazon Echo's Alexa is good enough to be the after-school nanny, asking about the kids' day and checking up on homework and offering ideas for a snacks or providing tutoring and entertainment?