Pages

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Young, hip, connected

If they are young then they probably know everything there is to know about technology.
This is just a fact of life. The younger someone is, the more likely they are to have an insider's knowledge about the complex, mechanistic world of the future. We assume that children are raised in the strict, yet logical world of binary that fosters a sixth sense for all things electronic. Like Robert Redford, they whisper to the machines and the machines whisper back in kind with all the sordid details of their lives. The machines spout useful information at the mere mention of a young person's name.
The young are in synch with the tech. We should all bow down and submit ourselves, or just simply click "submit".

Why do we do this? Why do we assume that our more youthful have an untapped resource into the minds of the machines? Maybe it was first caused when they had typewriting lessons in schools that caused us to assume that we were training our children to be more technologically savvy. Or maybe it was when we first introduced the pencil in a quill-dominated society. Or perhaps it was the introduction of written language over oral repetition. Whatever the first cause, it is now a fad that has been ingrained in our psyches.

I do not take offense to this. I welcome anyone assuming I know something about anything. However, I do not welcome their inevitable disappointment once they hear me talk about the subject in question. This case, however, is different. This case revolves around things that I can still bull-shit my way through. I can still drop a few acronyms to confuse people into blind submission and "thoughtful" head-nodding. But it will only take me so far.
It is only a matter of time before those that are younger than myself expose me for the fraud that I am. All it will take is someone who is a few minutes younger than me to bring to light the horrible truth that there is yet another thing that I am completely in the dark about. And they will expose me withiout mercy. They will display my shame for the whole world to see. And all there will be left is a shattered man who became defragmented when his hardware became corrupted by time.

No comments:

Post a Comment