American Scientist

Children are born engineers. Everything they see, they want to change. They want to remake their world. They want to roll over, crawl, walk. They want to make words out of sounds. They want to amplify and broadcast their voice. They want to rearrange their clothes. They want to hold their air, their water, their fire, their earth. They want to swim and fly. They want their food, and they want to play with it too. They want to move dirt and pile sand. They want to build dams and make lakes. They want to launch ships of sticks. They want to stack blocks and cans and boxes. They want to build towers and bridges. They want to move cars and trucks over roads of their own design. They want to walk and ride on wheels. They want to draw and paint and write. They want to command armies and direct dolls. They want to make pictures out of pixels. They want to play games—sometimes computer games. They want to talk across distance and time. They want to control the universe. They want to make something of themselves.