Thought for the day 1/5/11

Do we, as a species, worry too much about the next generation?  It seems ingrained into our DNA.  At least within the past century.  Our grandparents' general opinion of our parents generation seemed negative.  They didn't face enough hardship, had it too easy, 10 miles in the snow both ways, and on and on and on.  Babyboomers seem to have the same perception of Generation X, and we all know that pretty much everyone snubs their noses at Gen Y.  The derogatory pun is even built into the name.

I hear a lot of bitching from my peers, and those in the preceding generations.  "No one knows how to count change anymore at the store."  "Google gives them all the answers."  "What would they do without computers?"  "No one ever plays outside."  Listening to most of these comments, the general conclusion is that we're all screwed.  No hope for the future at all. 

But this logic may be flawed at its core.  So much so that I question whether we can even call it logic. Let's explore this, shall we? 

First, I feel compelled to point out that we're all still here.  So at least 3 generations have been wrong.   The best that anyone predicting our demise (based on generational incompetence) can possibly hope for at this point is a 25% success rate.  That's not very good.  So statistically speaking, the best possibility for this theory is dismal failure.

Let us now move on to another common 'fear-ception'.  We'll call it "The boy who couldn't count change".  It does seem that a startlingly large portion of fast food and grocery store clerks have no concept of how to calculate change in their heads.  Alarming?  Hell yes.  Until you think about it.  How often do you use cash anymore?  If you're average, the answer to that question is : "almost never".  Cash has become the minority method of currency exchange.  By a lot.  So part of the issue is that these kids simply don't get the practice.  Another thing to consider is what $7.25, the current minimum wage, will get you.  It may get you a lot of things, but two things it's guaranteed not to get you is 1) motivated people and 2) qualified help.  The smartest people alive today are way smarter than anyone ever has been.  And the dumbest people...they're about the same as they've always been.  There were tons of teenagers that couldn't count change in 1955 either, no matter what grandpa says.  Know how I know?  I worked for them in fast food restaurants when I was a teenager. 

But even then, Thoughts on Thoughts guy, could we do it without Google????  Could we survive without our smart phones?  First, probably.  Second, will we ever actually have to?  For all of the systems that keep our technophilia afloat to crash simultaneously is unlikely at best.  And for them to crash permanently, or even for an extended period of time:  highly improbable even on Nero's best day.  Consider the Wikileaks backlash.  The best hackers in the world, united with the best technology in the world, took down MasterCard.com for...about an hour.  Visa was down for about 15 minutes in a handful of countries.  Amazon and Pay pal never fell.  For every kid that can't count change there is another kid that can write a line of code that will make the first kid obsolete, but still employable.  For that $7.25 an hour.  Why?  Software people love fast food.  It's called balance. 

So it seems that underneath all of this 'holier-than-though' paranoia and doomsdaying there lies a serious flaw:  We assume that because kids can't master the tedious bullshit that was our lives as children, that they have no hope to be better than we are in the future.  I say that the opposite is true.  Past is prologue, and human history is a story of better, faster, stronger, and smarter, with very few exceptions.  I'm proud that my 5 year old can work an iPhone.  That's the skill set she will need for life.  She will never need to roll a tire with a stick for fun, or count change after selling your fat ass a burger.