My wife and I are expecting our first child this year, which got me thinking about what a strange new world he’ll grow up in. Advances in technology and conventional wisdom should give my son a huge head start over my generation. In no particular order, here are eleven things my child will learn that I once learned completely differently.
1. How to tie your shoes.
OK, we’re starting small, but still—who knew we’ve been tying our shoes wrong our whole lives? This is one of the most fundamental skills of childhood. Tie your shoes this way, and find yourself bending down far less often to re-tie them.
2. How to consume music.
It seems like a lifetime ago that we were driving to stores to buy CDs, discovering maybe one new artist a month if we were lucky. (I still remember my elation at finding Dark Side of the Moon at a thrift store for a dollar.) By contrast, our children will have access to the world’s music at their fingertips, with algorithms telling them what to listen to next. And we can all rest assured they’ll take this completely for granted.
3. How to make things.
I’ve been following the Maker Movement with keen interest (I directed a film about it last year). Chances are, things like 3D printers, laser cutters and CNC routers will become household objects by the time my child is old enough to use them, giving him or her the ability to easily design and produce physical objects at home.
Add to this the rapidly decreasing cost of professional-grade cinema gear, and I can only guess some of my favorite father-son time will be spent building sets in the living room for my son’s new action (figure) film.
4. How to order things.
Amazon blew our collective mind when it unveiled its planned 30-minute drone delivery option. In 10 years this will probably seem normal, so I’m likely to get a confused stare from my son when I talk about once waiting three whole days for a truck to deliver my package.
5. How to pick a restaurant.
Growing up we never had the benefit of aggregated restaurant reviews on demand like we enjoy today, so we might have totally missed out on that hole-in-the-wall Lebanese place. (Somehow though, we still routinely have no answer to the question, “Where should we eat?”)
6. How to drive.
Fascinatingly, this may be a skill my child never learns. The driverless car is already a reality, and robot cars just might make it into the mainstream in the 15 years before my son reaches driving age. As a father, this means I may never have to worry about him being involved in an accident.
7. How to spend money.
I’m already accepting credit card payments on my phone with a Square reader and using Simple to make banking actually kind of enjoyable (who knew?). These things would have seemed fantastical ten years ago. With these improvements, as well as newer innovations like Coin, it’s impossible to say what the future of cash will look like for our kids—but money is going to be much more intuitive and fun to manage than it used to be. Maybe our kids will be more interested in managing it well as a result.
8. How to learn.
I was lucky enough to learn Adobe design software in seventh grade from an expert teacher. That was the year Google was founded. Today no in-person training is needed, and most kids probably take these types of creative skills for granted, thanks to the ubiquity of online resources like lynda.com and Creative Live, not to mention the amount of knowledge that’s just a Google search away. It’s a simple fact that little information will be out of reach for my child. The most important thing to teach him won’t be information itself, but how to find it when he needs it.
9. How to work.
Remote work is on the rise, and chances are good that my son may never work in an office. With the ubiquity of remote collaboration tools, and the remote work successes already enjoyed by thousands of companies in almost every industry, remote work just might be the number-one perk of the top companies of the future.
10. How to use computers.
When I was a child, a computer was a single thing, a gray box that never moved, with a screen, a keyboard and a mouse. But today computers are in everything, and the future of computing is even more complex than we can imagine. My son will be growing up in a time when everything in his life will be connected in an intricate information ecosystem. As we head into this new age, teaching our children—and ourselves—to unplug once in a while will be more important than ever.
11. How to communicate.
I remember the first time I chatted online with someone on the other side of the world, and how strangely epic that moment felt. Our kids will not know a time when this wasn’t possible. Global communication is in their DNA, and their voices have an incredible reach from the time they’re old enough to use computers. The key is having something to say, and learning how to shape messages that matter. These are some of the most important things I can teach my son.
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