Do you remember a world...
- without smartphones
- personal computers
- the Internet
- mobile phones
- in-home gaming systems
- digital cameras
The answers to these questions depend upon the age of the reader. If you are ancient like me, you answer yes to all thse question. Someone in his or her early 20s might not remember a time without any of those.
Technology is a generational endeavor. With the pace of advancement, we are going to see generations that are completely oblivious to "how things use to be".
By the way, the same holds for one's relationships to money, which we will explosre also.
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Generations and Technology
Do you realize, that anyone under 10 right now will not really know a world without AI. They will also come of age in an era where some forms of transportation are autonomous. Robots will be normal.
In other words, they willl be living in what was once considered science fiction.
For me, the first time I experienced that was with the flipphone. Anyone who watched the original Star Trek series on television, the one with William Shatner as Captain Kirk, will remember the transponder they utilized to converse with the Enterpricse.
Naturally, this was, at the time, science fiction. It took roughly 30 years, but I recall seeing my frist flipphone. It was like the television came to life.
With technology, sci-fi has a way to warping our view of things. It also helps us to create the future. When these ideas are spread, people start to work on making them reality. It often can take a long time for something to be developed (or built) but it can happen.
We are still waiting on Rosie the Robot from The Jetsons. There is also anticipation of Jarvis, from the film Iron Man, arriving. It might be within the next decade this comes into being.
How does this change things? We can see how, in the medium term, younger people will never learn how to drive a vehicle. While this might seem absurd to some, there was a time when most everyone could ride a horse. What percentage of the population can do that today?
What was once a necesary skill is NOW a luxury. We saw many of them over the last couple decades.
Technology and Money
Technology affects money, thus it becomes generational.
How many younger people walk around with cash? Do they know what it means to pay for things in such a manner?
Over the last 30 years, we saw the transformation from cash to debit cards to payment apps. Soon, we are going to see crypto generating more transactions, pushing some of the older systems aside.
Make no mistake, money is technology. monetary systems are networks. Whether we look at commercial banks, Visa, PayPal, or the Eurodollar system, it all boils down to networks.
Baby Boomers have a tough time with a lot of this. They were of an era where change was slow. There might have been a few major changes over the course of 30 years.
If we constrast that to today, we see that we had a number of innovations in the last 30 years which altered society. A few are:
- smartphone
- personal computer
- internet
- AI
- digital camera
What do things look like 15 years from now? Obviously we don't have the answer but it will be fun to watch.
It will also be interesting to see how different generations adapt to the changes.