Tonight while doing homework, I was fascinated by my new kitten. She is about 5 months old, has a few orange spots. Her name is Aspen, and she was playing with a string hanging off a door knob. Just fascinated with this piece of string. She played with it for about 10 minutes, constantly trying to pull it down. She then moved to a little rat tow and proceeded to try to tear it up, the best a kitten could do. She was extremely curious of the string and the rat. She continuously wanted to see what would happen if she pulled on the string, wondering what it was, and what was inside of the rat she was attempting to kill.
I think a lot of the thoughts running through Aspen’s head could be applied to humans. When I see a wrapped present under the Christmas tree I wonder what is inside of it. When I see a button, what happens when I press it?
So what in the heck does this have to do with technology?
In technology, and more specifically, the internet, is that people are able to search to their hearts desire and find whatever they want to know about an increasing number of subjects. Want to know the capital of Chile? Argentina? Brazil? it is all a few clicks away. Things like Wikipedia allow people to access information about things not even covered in giant encyclopedias. With all of this information, you would think it be very easy for the kids of the next generation to grow up and have more knowledge than a lot of people. You might be surprised
I was reading a chapter in The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman. At one point, he reads a letter written by a 5th Grade Teacher. This teacher had gone through parent teacher conferences but remembered four in particular. In one, a foreign parent told the teacher that the homework given was not enough, and not challenging enough. Another foreigner complained about noting have a science book and having a ‘flimsy science curriculum’. ‘How could we be a competitive school when we didn’t have a science book’ they complained. The ironic part about these 2 conferences, is that many other American parents had told the same teacher, about their kids who had the exact same class, with the same homework, that the course was too hard and couldn’t complete it and have time to ‘be a kid’.Â
In NASA, as of 2006, there is not enough younger scientists to replace the older people. People who were inspired by the Sputnik and JFK, when America poured money into the promotion of Science and Technology. Well now that we have just gone through a president that hasn’t promoted either in a big way, we are left with a low interest in Science and Technology, interest that we will need in order to become a more sucessful country.Â
I think that kids today have lost interest in the engineering and building on new technologies. I go to class, and plenty of people are enjoying the benefits of the advancements. People are using iPhones and iPods, Laptops, Computers, everything you can think of. But I think this new generation of people have been born into a society that doesn’t particularly encourage them to take up interests in mathematics or technology. We have lost our curiousity.
No longer are we like Aspen, continuing to search for things and find out how they work. One thing Thomas mentioned in the book is that in order to build greater advancements, we first have to understand everything that happens with our current systems. But if people aren’t urged to figure that out, we are going to have graduates that don’t contribute to the global innovation. This may lead to us not actually realizing the progression most people expect. The next generation of people might not live better than the last generation. If we can’t compete with intelligence, then the only thing we can compete with is wages, meaning they will go down.