Teach Your Parents Well
When I look back over the years, I can say that I have had an outstanding education, for the most part. Though I would badmouth school as a teen like anybody else and openly question and criticize the curriculum when I was a student, I have to admit that the authorities in the end got it right, for the most part. Today I am convinced that I was adequately prepared for adulthood and equipped with a formidable arsenal of knowledge.
I have always believed that it would be the adults passing on their knowledge, the proverbial passing of the torch from one generation to the next. Today, I am not so sure anymore. Today, it looks like there will be no handing it over. These kids will grab it without a please or thank you.
Let’s not kid ourselves here: the difference in our lives today will still be people, whether you are a rocket scientist or a homeless person living in a shelter. That’s what being a human being entails. But then there are the technological skills that suggest that we are not too far from having a ten year old teaching a seminar on how to handle an iPad.
My oldest son Axl is truly amazing, and from what I can tell, he will only learn more as he gets older. This started last year when I bought an iPhone for Christmas. Some people I know won’t bother with an iPhone. For the longest time I was frustrated with the thing. Completely forgotten amidst all these new applications and user friendly installations that could adequately support the modern life on the go was the fact that I couldn’t use the actual phone itself. A friend of mine in Jordan likes to tell the story about how he went shopping in a Nokia store and asked for a cell phone. The kid serving him had no idea what he was talking about and offered him internet, global navigation, and the stock market, all at one low monthly fee. No, my buddy insisted, you don’t understand. I just want a phone.
Back to the next generation: my three year old has already taught me things on my iPad that I never knew existed. Heard about the Wikileaks story? How hundreds of teenagers came to the aid of jailed Wikileaks founder Julian Assange?
Here our governments thought, no problem, we’ll freeze his bank accounts, arraign him on various charges, and keep him quiet. How did the world’s youth respond? How about by hacking into dozens of government and business websites, those who had blacklisted Assange? The security of these websites is controlled by executives making six to seven digit salaries and have gone to school for years to prevent cyber attacks. I think the message came through loud and clear. Even various diplomas and years of experience couldn’t keep (hundreds of) kids from easily hacking into their websites. And I can almost guarantee that none of those teenagers had an iPad when they were toddlers. What do you think this next generation (including Axl) of tech wiz kids will look like? Child labor might just become legal, and NASA and the NSA might start hiring junior high schoolers.
Today, authorities will have to communicate more with our youth rather than just demand blind obedience and impose their will on them. It used to be easy to mete out punishment to youngsters back in the day. Ground him, make an example of him, suspend him from school. Today, that might not be so easy, because that same kid you punish today might knock out your website and deplete all of your bank accounts tomorrow.
Often I can see Axl hammering away at that iPad as if he had invented it. His little fingers work quickly. He will go from music to game to e-book to dozens of other applications I have never seen. It looks like I might be teaching him some things, but technology won’t be one of them. Scary? No, because he will have to be self sufficient in our knowledge driven world, so it’s par for the course. There are millions of kids like him who will have the same skills, and it will be us, the parents, kindly asking these kids later how to pull up information, how to perfect this photo we just shot, how to make transactions we used to think could only be done by snail mail. That is today’s reality. Since the quality of life is already decreasing and the dog eat dog mentality increasing with each decade, I don’t feel sorry for my generation one bit.
We have left our kids quite a mess through various questionable and self-serving decisions we have made politically, economically, and morally. It is only fair that they shape their own agenda. They are well on their way to doing just that, besides letting their own skills re-define the agenda. Good for them.
I have always believed that it would be the adults passing on their knowledge, the proverbial passing of the torch from one generation to the next. Today, I am not so sure anymore. Today, it looks like there will be no handing it over. These kids will grab it without a please or thank you.
Let’s not kid ourselves here: the difference in our lives today will still be people, whether you are a rocket scientist or a homeless person living in a shelter. That’s what being a human being entails. But then there are the technological skills that suggest that we are not too far from having a ten year old teaching a seminar on how to handle an iPad.
My oldest son Axl is truly amazing, and from what I can tell, he will only learn more as he gets older. This started last year when I bought an iPhone for Christmas. Some people I know won’t bother with an iPhone. For the longest time I was frustrated with the thing. Completely forgotten amidst all these new applications and user friendly installations that could adequately support the modern life on the go was the fact that I couldn’t use the actual phone itself. A friend of mine in Jordan likes to tell the story about how he went shopping in a Nokia store and asked for a cell phone. The kid serving him had no idea what he was talking about and offered him internet, global navigation, and the stock market, all at one low monthly fee. No, my buddy insisted, you don’t understand. I just want a phone.
Back to the next generation: my three year old has already taught me things on my iPad that I never knew existed. Heard about the Wikileaks story? How hundreds of teenagers came to the aid of jailed Wikileaks founder Julian Assange?
Here our governments thought, no problem, we’ll freeze his bank accounts, arraign him on various charges, and keep him quiet. How did the world’s youth respond? How about by hacking into dozens of government and business websites, those who had blacklisted Assange? The security of these websites is controlled by executives making six to seven digit salaries and have gone to school for years to prevent cyber attacks. I think the message came through loud and clear. Even various diplomas and years of experience couldn’t keep (hundreds of) kids from easily hacking into their websites. And I can almost guarantee that none of those teenagers had an iPad when they were toddlers. What do you think this next generation (including Axl) of tech wiz kids will look like? Child labor might just become legal, and NASA and the NSA might start hiring junior high schoolers.
Today, authorities will have to communicate more with our youth rather than just demand blind obedience and impose their will on them. It used to be easy to mete out punishment to youngsters back in the day. Ground him, make an example of him, suspend him from school. Today, that might not be so easy, because that same kid you punish today might knock out your website and deplete all of your bank accounts tomorrow.
Often I can see Axl hammering away at that iPad as if he had invented it. His little fingers work quickly. He will go from music to game to e-book to dozens of other applications I have never seen. It looks like I might be teaching him some things, but technology won’t be one of them. Scary? No, because he will have to be self sufficient in our knowledge driven world, so it’s par for the course. There are millions of kids like him who will have the same skills, and it will be us, the parents, kindly asking these kids later how to pull up information, how to perfect this photo we just shot, how to make transactions we used to think could only be done by snail mail. That is today’s reality. Since the quality of life is already decreasing and the dog eat dog mentality increasing with each decade, I don’t feel sorry for my generation one bit.
We have left our kids quite a mess through various questionable and self-serving decisions we have made politically, economically, and morally. It is only fair that they shape their own agenda. They are well on their way to doing just that, besides letting their own skills re-define the agenda. Good for them.
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