Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Lost in Translation or just Lost between Generations?
Some have labelled the beginning of the 1990s as the start of the information age, as we saw the internet and world wide web start to take off. However, as we are flooded with more and more information every minute, hour, day, week, month, and even years of our lives, have we ever stopped and thought about our kids? Have we stopped and thought about the next generation? Some may think this is a rather weird question to be asking, since we were all kids once and we just sort of got along fine. However, things are different now, especially for the past 15 years.
I remember growing up, the two big sources of daily information was the evening news and the daily paper or other printed material. Those medias were nice and static and were easily monitored by parents who cared to. So, growing up wasn't too stressful. There was the usual peer pressure and the childish yearning for the new toy on the market. Then when we hit puberty, it was the curiosity about sexual material, and we all somehow got hold of some porn one way or another. You know what I'm talking about, especially you guys out there. There was really no feeling of being overwhelmed and life passed by like it should.
However, things are different and has been different. I grew up in the 1980s and early 1990s. I was pretty sure of what I wanted to do with my life by the time the full force of the information age dawned on me. But what about the kids that grew up during the peaks of the information age? The ones that are just starting to get into college now and maybe high school? Many of them took the full force of growing up in the information age. The playing field has been alterred drastically when the internet became popular. Some time around 1996, things really started to change. Everything started going online. And I have to admit, I loved it. The massive flow of information and availability of information at short time intervals. If something happened somewhere on the other side of the globe, one can know about it within minutes.
The web grew exponentially as the tsunami of information swept the world. This was a good thing, since all the information you thought you would ever need is at your fingertip. But there is a down side to all this...all this information can be overwhelming and may not be a good thing.....
Personally, I feel that for a developing personality to be flooded with so much information is not a good thing. You read, see, and hear all this information, but if you lack the capacity to properly filter and process it, then to a certain extent, it will overwhelm you. They say information is power, but that is only true when you can properly process the information. So, what has the information age created? A generation of kids that can find any information they need any time and feel that this "knowledge" empowers them.
For those of you who have read the book "Brave New World," you should remember that there's a section in there that says that you can only subliminally teach moral values, but not actually knowledge. For example, they can use subliminal learning to flood a child's mind with alot of information about, say, the Nile river in Egypt. The child could recite the information, but had no clue how to use it. And that's what I feel has happened. We have a generation of kids who feel empowered by the illusion of knowledge, when all they have is nothing but the ability to recite what they read and possible play with some of the wording. To say it bluntly, their knowledge is only skin deep.
Having skin deep knowledge is in no way bad, its the illusion that you know more than you really do that makes it bad. They acquire what they feel are "skills" and believe that that is it. Many then go out looking for high paying jobs with really nothing underneath their belts. The sad thing is, many don't realize they have nothing. They are the truely lost. The massive amount of information has caused them to lose sight of what reality is, or at least they have a warped concept of reality because of all the information that they obtained. So, I call them the "lost generation."
I know I'm a little bold in my statements, and that it may very well be from anecdotal experience with the current generation of kids around the age of 13 - 18, but this is pretty much how I feel.
As a programmer and an engineer to a certain extent, I really have to complain about a few things. It kind of ticks me off sometimes when I talk to kids that know how to create a webpage with frontpage or dreamweaver and feel that they know how to program. When has webpage development been elevated to the level of programming? You copy and paste a few javascripts and play with some values and you think you're a programmer? I really wish I can cram into their stubborn little heads that they are only able to do this because many "real" programmers threw in countless hours to create what they are using. Stepping on other peoples' shoulders and calling yourself the king of the world is a very dangerous thing.
There are also kids and teenagers that play with scripting languages and mod games. They think that's real programming and I say 50/50. A scripting language is a high level programming language, so I can let that slide. However, using prebuilt game and level editors IS NOT programming.
What I'm really afraid of is that we will end up having a society and half an industry of people who know how to use tools, but never question why the tools work. A generation that believe in the ends and the tools that help them meet it. It gets dangerous when the foundation changes. Its like being on the top of a human pyramid in the circus, when the people below you decide to change formations and move, you better know when that's going to happen or you're going to take a nasty fall.
The point after all that rambling is that many kids have become obsessed with the ends that they have forgotten the fundamentals. We praise our kids about their achievements, but we never really worry about their fundamentals. Only a solid foundation can make you a success in life. That's how successful got to where they are today. I think many kids, teenagers, and people have forgotten that.
So, this is my really long rambling and gripe about the "lost generation."
Some have labelled the beginning of the 1990s as the start of the information age, as we saw the internet and world wide web start to take off. However, as we are flooded with more and more information every minute, hour, day, week, month, and even years of our lives, have we ever stopped and thought about our kids? Have we stopped and thought about the next generation? Some may think this is a rather weird question to be asking, since we were all kids once and we just sort of got along fine. However, things are different now, especially for the past 15 years.
I remember growing up, the two big sources of daily information was the evening news and the daily paper or other printed material. Those medias were nice and static and were easily monitored by parents who cared to. So, growing up wasn't too stressful. There was the usual peer pressure and the childish yearning for the new toy on the market. Then when we hit puberty, it was the curiosity about sexual material, and we all somehow got hold of some porn one way or another. You know what I'm talking about, especially you guys out there. There was really no feeling of being overwhelmed and life passed by like it should.
However, things are different and has been different. I grew up in the 1980s and early 1990s. I was pretty sure of what I wanted to do with my life by the time the full force of the information age dawned on me. But what about the kids that grew up during the peaks of the information age? The ones that are just starting to get into college now and maybe high school? Many of them took the full force of growing up in the information age. The playing field has been alterred drastically when the internet became popular. Some time around 1996, things really started to change. Everything started going online. And I have to admit, I loved it. The massive flow of information and availability of information at short time intervals. If something happened somewhere on the other side of the globe, one can know about it within minutes.
The web grew exponentially as the tsunami of information swept the world. This was a good thing, since all the information you thought you would ever need is at your fingertip. But there is a down side to all this...all this information can be overwhelming and may not be a good thing.....
Personally, I feel that for a developing personality to be flooded with so much information is not a good thing. You read, see, and hear all this information, but if you lack the capacity to properly filter and process it, then to a certain extent, it will overwhelm you. They say information is power, but that is only true when you can properly process the information. So, what has the information age created? A generation of kids that can find any information they need any time and feel that this "knowledge" empowers them.
For those of you who have read the book "Brave New World," you should remember that there's a section in there that says that you can only subliminally teach moral values, but not actually knowledge. For example, they can use subliminal learning to flood a child's mind with alot of information about, say, the Nile river in Egypt. The child could recite the information, but had no clue how to use it. And that's what I feel has happened. We have a generation of kids who feel empowered by the illusion of knowledge, when all they have is nothing but the ability to recite what they read and possible play with some of the wording. To say it bluntly, their knowledge is only skin deep.
Having skin deep knowledge is in no way bad, its the illusion that you know more than you really do that makes it bad. They acquire what they feel are "skills" and believe that that is it. Many then go out looking for high paying jobs with really nothing underneath their belts. The sad thing is, many don't realize they have nothing. They are the truely lost. The massive amount of information has caused them to lose sight of what reality is, or at least they have a warped concept of reality because of all the information that they obtained. So, I call them the "lost generation."
I know I'm a little bold in my statements, and that it may very well be from anecdotal experience with the current generation of kids around the age of 13 - 18, but this is pretty much how I feel.
As a programmer and an engineer to a certain extent, I really have to complain about a few things. It kind of ticks me off sometimes when I talk to kids that know how to create a webpage with frontpage or dreamweaver and feel that they know how to program. When has webpage development been elevated to the level of programming? You copy and paste a few javascripts and play with some values and you think you're a programmer? I really wish I can cram into their stubborn little heads that they are only able to do this because many "real" programmers threw in countless hours to create what they are using. Stepping on other peoples' shoulders and calling yourself the king of the world is a very dangerous thing.
There are also kids and teenagers that play with scripting languages and mod games. They think that's real programming and I say 50/50. A scripting language is a high level programming language, so I can let that slide. However, using prebuilt game and level editors IS NOT programming.
What I'm really afraid of is that we will end up having a society and half an industry of people who know how to use tools, but never question why the tools work. A generation that believe in the ends and the tools that help them meet it. It gets dangerous when the foundation changes. Its like being on the top of a human pyramid in the circus, when the people below you decide to change formations and move, you better know when that's going to happen or you're going to take a nasty fall.
The point after all that rambling is that many kids have become obsessed with the ends that they have forgotten the fundamentals. We praise our kids about their achievements, but we never really worry about their fundamentals. Only a solid foundation can make you a success in life. That's how successful got to where they are today. I think many kids, teenagers, and people have forgotten that.
So, this is my really long rambling and gripe about the "lost generation."
