Forty-four years later, my son is doing the same.
While a Lego brick is a brick is (still) a brick, some things have changed. Radically changed. Kind of makes me wish I was 8 years old!
You see, when I was 8, we didn’t have 800-piece Lego sets containing 45-page instruction manuals showing step-by-step details on how to build a Toa Hordika Matau Bionicle. No, back then, my mom would simply buy me a big ‘ol box of Lego bricks, drop me in front of the TV (showing Star Trek episodes, first run, but of course!), and leave me to my own devices. And let me tell you, even in such primitive conditions, I was able to construct quite an impressive Lego-world. 
Fast forward forty-four years, and I sit here, watching my 8-year old son, completely engrossed building Lego worlds. So, what’s different? Well, most of the time, he’s using — as did I — bricks of assorted colors, sizes and shapes to build the most wonderful assortment of robots, cars, cities, trains, aliens, and starships. But, unlike me, he’s also using some very sophisticated CAD-CAM software to design his creations on his computer, print them out (complete with step-by-step building instructions and parts-list), and share them with others on Lego.com. Indeed, thanks to the wonders of “mass-personalization manufacturing,” he’s awaiting delivery of his one-of-a-kind Lego building set, complete with his assembled “Robotic Car Plane” painted on the cover of the box.
So, what uber-sophisticated CAD-CAM software did he use to design his creations? No, it’s not Autodesk running on a Cray supercomputer, but rather, Lego’s Digital Designer running on his dual-1-GHz Mac, a software-hardware combination whose power and sophistication would have been reserved for all but the most secretive of government employees when I was his age!
Yes, I know that technology is the cart we all too frequently put in front of the horse. But after seeing my 8-year old son seamlessly move back and forth between the physical and digital worlds of design and imagination (and the physical and digital creations that result from that interaction), I have to admit that, just sometimes, technology can augment, and sometimes allow us to even transcend, our god-given facilities.
Ahhh, but to be 8-years old!
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