For something I haven't done in I don't know how long, I went out with a couple guys from work for some coffee, some pool and a chat. It was very "Sex in the City" - without the designer handbags and shoes that we can't afford. Still it was nice to get out for a few hours and spend time shooting pool and the breeze, solving the world's problems. Which had me thinking a bit, because I am pretty sure that when my wife goes out with her friends, they don't talk about these kinds of topics.
Not that it matters, but it is interesting to note perhaps how far ranging the topics move and how so little of it is centered around people, but larger concepts perhaps and things that might not be inside our circle of control, but still affect us. Things like politics, or social activism.
And one thing that came up was the question as to whether our parents felt the same as we do about the world in terms of the direction of the young and whether it is a generational process or, something to actually be concerned about. Personally, I think it is something to be concerned about.
One of the guys was talking about the social pressure when his child was younger to get him a smart phone, because how else would he learn to interact in the modern world and learn about technology. Ten years later, his son is almost eighteen and uses his phone a lot, and well, but has no real idea about how to actually create anything for it.
And this is where I think it is different from the past compared to the worries of our parents, as this is the common theme now, user, not creator. And the analogy I provided for how I see this is, it is
the difference between a drug addict, and the chemist that creates the drugs.
One has skills that can be applied to all kinds of jobs, as well as fundamental understanding that allows them to learn in various field and widen the skillset further - the other is a drug addict. A user only. There are a lot of technological drug addicts out there who have no more skill with technology, other than being able to swipe at the screen or play Candy Crush.
Crushing it.
In the past, while our parents might have been concerned about how the new generation was going to navigate the world, at least during that time, fundamental skills were being developed, as these were needed to get through even the basics of childhood. Now, not so much, as there is technological support for everything and the fundamental skills that have helped us develop for millennia, are disappearing, including interpersonal skills that facilitate cooperation.
The skills of today are not skills of the individual, it is how those individuals can leverage technology. Which is fine, but the more people who build these skills, it is likely that the less there will be who can actually develop the technology to leverage, meaning that at some point, it becomes highly specialized with a very small group capable and eventually, stagnates. But what it definitely does, is makes the majority of people reliant on both the technology they utilize and the people who create it.
We can already see this happening to some extent in the "influencer" world, where people have built their "personal brand" and connected it to a platform that monetizes them, but is not actually theirs. They can call it a business and it is in some sense, but one is always beholden to the technology, the platform, and that is well outside of the control of the influencer. Very, very, very few influencers can make demands from the platform itself.
And this only gets worse as less people have real-world skills that they can apply personally, without the support of technology. Because at some point, a lot of the roles that are dependent on codified technology, can be codified themselves. Streaming influencers are already concerned about the rise of AI streamers and as they get better and better, why watch a human? In many cases, it is a shoot themselves in the foot thing, where for example, they use artificially generated voices instead of their own, which means now, who can tell the difference between human a bot?
The world is getting increasingly complex, but it it is simultaneously getting harder to make any changes, because every argument is polarized and there are a lot of arguments that have become violently opposed, or supported. But, because an individual can only strongly support at most a couple of things actively, they make their decisions about the world on those things, even if there is a massive amount of other topics that affect them. So, the political landscape is an absolute mess and getting increasingly inefficient, and it was never efficient to begin with.
As far as I can see, fundamental skills are vital for success and will be going forward, but these skills aren't taught in school, they are learned well before, when the brain is developing. However, There are now generations of kids who haven't developed this hardwiring and it is an unknown as to how it is going to impact on their future, and the future of humanity. I can predict, but it is decades down the track before we really have any good indications and by then, it will be three generations heading on the same path, making a pivot very hard, especially since in order to take a different track, creative skills in fundamental areas are needed, and they might be largely missing.
There is little we can do about the world as a whole, but there is a lot we can do in terms of our own behavior and for those with kids, how we raise them. I often meet the argument that "kids should be kids" and have time to play, but it comes from those who think that play means passively watching television, learning nothing applicable. It is nonsense - kids are curious, they shouldn't be sitting still, they should be exploring their world, getting up to mischief, testing their skills. But if you have no skills to test, I guess you have to live vicariously and watch other people flexing theirs.
Always behind the eight ball.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]