#4: Thoughts: For the New Year, Let’s Resolve to Improve Our Tech Literacy, New York Times

“ This year we began to see the creaking evidence of our collective ignorance about the digital age.” — Farhad Manjoo

Summary: Manjoo’s article makes the argument that technology is becoming more predominant in areas it previously was not. In 2015 we saw technology take center stage in issues such as healthcare, politics, terrorism, and privacy. The author also argues that it will continue to develop at a rate that is faster than what it will take for the next generations to get to a position where they navigate it. In short, technology is growing, molding and adapting at a speed that is faster than our capability, so we need to stop wasting time debating on its important, and start understanding it, before we are left in the dark.

Analysis: Manjoo makes a strong case. It is true that these past few years have felt a bit topsy-turvy. Who would have thought that Donald Trump would be running most of his presidential campaign on Twitter, not I. His tone in the article is neutral; he does a good job at highlighting how unprepared our government is when it comes to understanding, embracing, and most importantly, foreseeing the issues technology will present. On the flip side, it shows that there is still a lot of room for growth and improvement.

Synthesize: This article made me think a lot about O’Reilly’s “What is Web 2.0” article. A lot of what makes the internet so powerful are us, the users. Without engagement, there is no validation. What makes companies like Uber and AirBnB so awesome to us, and frightening to politicians and governmental entities, is that the people have a vital role in their success. The #BlackLivesMatter protests were all powered by the people. The internet is no longer static, it lives on different screens and many platforms. It is alive and evolving because we are constantly helping it evolve. O’Reilly refers to users as publishers. We are the publishers, writing our own stories, and this scares the bajesus out of these old entities.

I get Manjoo’s storyline: the internet and technology are here to stay. We need to understand it and speak it. It’s its own language, it’s the new mandarin; If we don’t learn to speak it, even if just at a conversational level, we are doing ourselves a disservice.