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All I can say is, thank the gods these things weren't around when I was a kid.

I mean all those media available to my kids today: iPod, XBox, CDs, DVDs, cable TV, computers, Internet, YouTube, MySpace, Google, e-mailing, instant messaging, text messaging, cell phones, and whatever other fantastic new miracle of electronic media will hit the market next week.

I'm glad I didn't have those things not because I think they're evil - but because I love those things. As a kid, I would've been an addict.

If I'd had those things when I was a kid, I would've been fully occupied all the time. Which on the face of it would've sounded good back then. I grew up on a rural lake that buzzed in the summer, but which for the three other seasons of the year dwindled in population down to a scattering of mostly widely spaced old folks. So when I grew up, I spent a lot of time alone. Having even a fragment of the many media options available today would've meant that I never would've been bored, which I was a good portion of the time as a kid.

But having today's media options when I was a kid would've also meant that I never, or not nearly as much, would've spent my days the way I often did: Exploring aimlessly the shoreline of the lake, in every season, in every mood (both mine and the lake's). Or fishing fruitlessly - but joyously - for hours on end. Or poring through my parents' bookshelves, immersing myself in books I otherwise would never have cracked open (Pilgrim's Progress? Islands in the Stream? The Foxfire series? A five-volume history of World War II? How many kids would plod through those today?). I wouldn't have spent so much time hanging out with my parents and their adult friends. Or sitting at my desk drawing or scribbling for hours. Or wandering through the woods seeing what was out there. Or lying in bed just . . . thinking. Or tinkering in the basement with hand tools and odd pieces of wood and old broken-down motorcycles and bits of machinery.

And even when there were other kids around, we spent our time playing sandlot baseball or pond hockey or running around the neighborhood making up war games - where, unlike in the organized sports that dominate today, we, ourselves, had to figure out, negotiate, and enforce the rules, and resolve disputes and complaints. And even when we were inside, we were playing board games or collaborating on inventions in the basement or even just sitting around in a real "chat room."

But my kids don't have the problem of having to negotiate their way through boredom, because they have a full smorgasbord of electronic media to fulfill any and every possible craving for distraction and to ward off any potential moment of unscheduled time or unstructured play. It is impossible for them to find themselves in a situation where they would have to ask themselves, What should I do now?

But don't get me wrong - I'm not wallowing in some mire of saccharin "'dem wuz th'days" nostalgia. As a grown-up, I am very deeply appreciative of the flexibility, connectivity, and creativity our 21st century mediated world offers us. In fact, these high-tech tools make possible my cherished mobile, migratory, cobble-together so-called "career." They keep me informed with things I need and want to know about, keep me in touch quickly and efficiently with those I need to, and with many of those whom I otherwise would let drift off my radar screen. They give me new and novel outlets for my creative endeavors, and access to other artists who would otherwise forever remain obscure to me. And entertainment-wise, I shameless enjoy the access to an endless assortment of programming when I want it, as I want it, as long as I want it.

Frankly, I'm glad my kids have this brave new mediated world literally at their fingertips. As a libertarian-leaning pagan-pantheist tribal-anarchist, I honestly believe there's potential and power in these conduits of technological communication being available to so many, so easily, so affordably, and so ubiquitously. In the 21st-century world, everybody can be a media mogul.

And I think it's important my kids develop these talents. I want them to be able to navigate and utilize this mediated world deliberately, creatively, adaptably, critically, and with self-awareness. I want them to be able to take on those real media moguls, and corporate rulers, and economic enslavers, and petty tyrants, and government serfs. I want them to be able to use technology to continue the revolution. Or to at least amuse themselves.

But it's a razor's edge: I also want them to know that the mediated world is not the World.

I believe - and here's where I bow and thank those many days of forced boredom I suffered as a youth - that there can there be too much entertainment, an excess of information, a glut of diversion, a disconnect stemming from over-distraction. I believe there can just be too much mediation in general - too much filtering of our physical, tangible, in-the-moment, where-you-are experiences; and too much pre-processing of what those real-world experiences mean.

I believe there can be too little boredom. I believe, if we're not careful, because our media options are now so many, so easy, so affordable, and so so ubiquitous, that we can too much miss the world that is not filtered and delivered through some media, that is not mediated yet that we are nonetheless really, truly living in. And which is still - for this can never change - the only place where we can truly experience truly living.

The unmediated world.

But I'm keenly aware that my kids don't have the historical and domestic circumstances that forced me into that world. And I'm also conscious of the fact that if my kids are anything like me - and I am too often reminded just how much that is so - then they're generally going to choose the mental fast-food of mediated stimulation over boredom's much more nutritious fare. That's what I would've done.

And so I have come to conclude that I - and we, all of us involved in the raising of the next generation that will inherit and inhabit this brave new world of unlimited media and their mixed blessings we have created for them - have an obligation our parents didn't quite so much carry, and probably couldn't have comprehended at all: that the one skill I have the duty to pass onto my kids, and that I believe may well be the most important skill for living in the 21st Century, is unmediation.

I want my kids to be aware that the only world that really matters, that is really real, is the one down by the shore of the lake, or out in the woods, or in the yard with friends, or right in the room there with you; that the only world that is really real is not necessarily always the one you can see, but is always the one that brushes your cheek and rustles your hair, that you can wrap your hand around or climb upon or jump into, that touches your lips and you can swirl around in your mouth. It's the world you breathe in. It's the world you live in.

The information revolution is over. Our kids are going to get trained in the media whether we guide them or not - that's a given. They're already better at it than we are. And I'm glad and excited for them.

But I can still teach them how to be skilled at unmediating. For their sake. Because the next revolution will be remembering how to live, remembering where we live.

And I have a feeling it's not going to be boring at all.

When he's not staring at his computer screen, Ken Wright lives in Durango. He is the author of A Wilder Life: Essays from Home and Why I'm Against It All (Raven's Eye Press). You can contact him or read his blog at www.monkeywrenchdad.com.