Chet Kittleson, 38, is the co-creator of Tin Can and a parent to three children, aged 10, 8, and 5. I imagine he might not appreciate my characterization of the product’s purpose as “surveillance” (observing one’s offspring falls within parental responsibilities) or the gadget itself as a “plaything.” He views it, instead, as a practical instrument: a method for youngsters to converse with their grandmother or arrange engagements with peers, and to be “integrated into the identical sphere adults inhabit.” During his childhood, he recounts, the fixed-line telephone was “arguably the most triumphant social platform ever known.” Every dwelling possessed one. Subsequently, mobile and smart handsets emerged. Direct conduits to the internet. “And at some point, we deemed the landline antiquated,” Kittleson states. “By doing so, we disregarded a demographic that significantly benefited from it: children.”
Our conversation took place via Zoom one afternoon from my dwelling in Los Angeles and his workspace in Seattle. Upon informing him that Amos and Clara had contacted me exceeding two dozen occasions, he appeared notably unsurprised. Initially, a flurry of usage occurs, he says, and then within a span of several weeks, the youngsters develop discernment. “They realize, ‘Ah, I understand I can genuinely accomplish significant tasks with this device,’” he remarks.
Kittleson, who estimates the majority of Tin Can patrons range from five to thirteen years old, expresses a desire to foster a “superior upbringing” or, in his words, “restoring children’s feelings of autonomy and self-assurance.” (Mike Duboe, a Greylock Ventures partner who spearheaded a funding round injecting $12 million into the firm in October, articulates an analogous view.) A guardian, recounting their child’s utilization of Tin Can on X, penned that it “evoked earlier times.”
Amos and Clara were not the sole individuals who, during the festive season, acquired the faculty of fluent speech. Toward the end of December, exasperated guardians deluged the company’s comment sections and communicated on Reddit that their Tin Cans were malfunctioning. Even though the Tin Can developers had expected a spike in activity during the festive period, the one-hundred-fold escalation in communication traffic astonished them.
Upon inquiring with Kittleson regarding the festive period’s disruption, he flinches slightly. “It was a demanding Christmas,” he acknowledges. (A notification on the Tin Can website stated, “We are examining a problem affecting the system.”) He mentions that subsequent deliveries of the item will be dispersed.
Moreover, the device is far from flawless: It can exhibit reverberations, inconsistent audio fidelity, and extended silences. The controls on the gadget are stiff to actuate, posing a difficulty for small digits such as Amos’s. His parent, Rebecca, occasionally assists him in initiating conversations. “It somewhat detracts from its autonomy-promoting aspect,” she remarks.
My initial telephone, similar to those of other youngsters in my age group, belonged to my household; it was a mustard-yellow, rigid plastic item positioned on the speckled brown linoleum countertop next to the cooking area. It occupied a distinctive position in my mental landscape—a device brimming with prospects—however, akin to most telephones of that era, it was shared among family members and potentially even overheard or supervised. Furthermore, it was affixed to a wall, impeding the ability to juggle tasks or freely circulate during a conversation. Kittleson, indeed, states that a driving force behind Tin Can was his vexation when contacting his mother on her mobile device. She was, he recounts, “the most irksome”: the type of individual who ambled throughout the dwelling during a call, attending to chores or other sundry tasks. Challenging to discern audibly. Prone to diversion.
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