The revolution will not be monetized
The revolution will not be monetized.
Nor, I suspect, will it be sparked by adults.
A $50 tablet + YouTube + Khan Academy = revolution.
Bear with me.
I’m sweeping dust off society’s collective bones, trying to piece together what was, what came to be, and divine where this will lead us.
Which I understand is foolish.
As computing is embedded into every device and inserted into every human interaction, everything and everyone is changed, forever. Meaning: very soon, the past will be more unknowable than the future.
Yeah, but…
While we still retain memories of the past world, let’s do our best to correct the mistakes.
Start with this: Give every child a tablet. Yes. Every single child.
“Teach them well and let them lead the way.”
Our current educational system, constructed in the early 1900s, optimized for the late 1950s, still run by government, overlorded by government unions, is modern-day Jim Crow, radically limiting the potential of literally millions of poorer children.
A child with a tablet and Internet access fully routes over, under and around this awful 20th-century legacy.
Here’s another innovation: community-based home schools:
A burgeoning movement of African-American parents done waiting for public schools to get better. The numbers of black parents choosing to home-school their children has doubled in a little over a decade “ about 220,000 black school-aged children are being homeschooled “ up from estimates of 103,000 in 2003.
Fifteen years ago was 2001. Fifteen years from today is 2031. Can you imagine children in 2031 attempting to imagine children, in 2001, attending these large, impersonal schools, run by career civil servants, where the child sat in a small desk, hour after hour, day after day, not allowed to look into their screens or access Giant Brain? Or self-segregate?
Would they think we were lying to them?
You had human teachers? Not chatbots? Are you lying to me?
Psalm, chapter 8: “Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.”
We are as strong as our children are capable.
Silicon Valley is rapidly becoming a secondary government overlay. Like government, it delivers services to the community, some of which are useful, some not, most of which it seems we cannot refuse. All the while, it’s taking a cut of the revenues from the community, every community, and sending those dollars back to the Bay Area — like government takes its cut and sends those revenues back to Washington, DC.
Pop quiz! In the past 40 years, which metro areas have grown more than Silicon Valley and Washington, DC?
We are not powerless.
We are more powerful than ever before.
If not us, then our children. We can exit government-mandated training for home schools. We can help children take advantage of the continuous drop in technology hardware costs.
When Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem there was no room for them at the inn, so they were forced to find lodging elsewhere, probably in a cave where animals were staying. When Jesus was born, Mary would not have wanted to lay her infant on the hard, cold, stone floor. Instead, she had to make due with what was available and the manger proved to be a convenient alternative: the hay was soft, the box was up and off the ground, and the sides tall enough to keep her child safely inside.
Once laid there, an angel told the shepherds that they would find their newborn Messiah and Lord lying in a manger They went in haste and found the child in the feeding trough and they feasted their eyes on him.
Jesus was born in poverty.
This mattered — but it was no barrier.
Jesus was not laid in a manger by accident. It is a major spiritual symbol. Animals go to the manger for physical food, but with Jesus lying on the hay, we can go to the manger for spiritual food.
Jesus has an infinite storehouse of nourishment available, and we can approach him any time and never go hungry.
Our technology is a never-ending source of data, connectivity, transactions, benefits. And it’s swirling around the world, fast, its velocity increasing, its scope expanding.
God told humans not to consume the apple. Our creations have free rein. What will they do? What will they create?
Will our children direct them or cede authority to them?
Matthew, chapter 18: See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.”
Parents can barely keep their smartphones at bay while dining with the family.
Yet they tell their children to turn theirs off, go be bored — boring is inspiration, they insist. The children are almost always smart enough to know that the parent is lying. If boredom is so great, why don’t parents ever turn off their screens?
Everyone is connected. All our waking hours are staring into a screen. The digitalization of all content and transactions continues unimpeded. This will fundamentally remake work, learning, play, power and influence.
Our children are living their lives in a digital realm.
We cannot know where this manna lands, nor how it will sustain them.
Will there be a gay algorithm? A Christian algorithm?
Might there be a “big data” analysis in real-time of everything your child does, says, buys, likes, shares, and deletes, then determines, correctly, that your child is gay? Or Christian? Or not at all gifted? Will the algorithm encourage then your child to make this publicly known?
Or take their life?
If you don’t tell the world you’re a Christian, I will, Siri told the little girl.
Will parents have a greater influence on their child’s life than the screen? Than Google?
We have stolen fire, handed it to our children, and now simply assume they will use it responsibly and in a manner(s) that we consider appropriate. With our 20th century brains!
This is foolish.
In the 20th century, we created comic book superheroes — like Superman — as wish fulfillment for children. The little ones could imagine that at last they had power over the adult world.
What happens now that it’s children, not us adults, who can better intuit, manipulate and collaborate with the tools that now control the levers of economy, culture and society?
Will we make our superheroes be children?
I understand if you want something more rational, more fully-formed. Try this: teach your children to be fierce and to know when to remain silent.
These fragments I’m unearthing, they suggest we are more like them, the past, than our children are like us.
If true, we have more to fear than they do.
