When we have our family get-togethers, at least every month, I have always enjoyed watching our grandchildren as they play; they grow so very fast. Now we have great-grandchildren, and it is enjoyable to see them play just as their parents did many years ago. As an old man observing the world speed by me, I sometimes wonder, “What is ahead for these little ones?”
The handheld computers today that occupy most everyone’s time and mental energy are truly a modern miracle. Everyone seems to have them, including the little ones. But what is next? What will little children be exposed to in the near future? The way we live our lives has changed and continues to change so fast that I have to wonder how near and future changes will affect the lives of the next generation.
Many of the old, so called, laws of nature are no longer considered laws by many but merely what wise men thought in ancient times. Professor Scott-Mumby stated: “Who says they are laws? Our experience here on earth may not translate fully to what goes on out there in the cosmos. Moreover, our pitifully short experience of reality may not give any clues as to what is really happening in the long reaches of time. If the rules of the process can change, then it’s not a law, is it?” He adds, “I’m not trying to hold science up to ridicule, merely pointing out that there are some very basic assumptions being made, which may not be valid at all.” His statement rings true. For example, he talks of gravity and how there is no evidence that there is such an element or whatever it is. No one has ever seen it nor felt its texture; we only know that there is something that causes planets to remain in place and that we are somehow stuck to the earth. Thank goodness for that! The newest claim is that what we call gravity is actually the result of electromagnetic fields. Even we are more electrical in nature than we had ever thought. Many of the so called worldly truths (natural laws), as we knew them, can no longer be found in the school text books. What many of us assumed were the truths of life were all tied up in a neat bundle, as if that were it, the final say on what controls everything on our beautiful earth. In many scholar’s minds, there was nothing more or new to learn.
It has taken a new generation of thinkers to have a different way of looking at things in new and exciting ways, making many old “truths” non-truths. The world is magical, and the new magicians (scientists, programmers and thinkers in general), do not have to use sleight of hand tricks to make magic. They are just using pure science—science a few yards, maybe even miles ahead of the science we knew, knowledge that has evolved. Maybe it would be appropriate and right to say that the reason that they have such great insight is because they are standing on the shoulders of giants, those intellects from the past who just couldn’t quite see as far and as well as they can, those who were not as high up on the mountain.
Now, I watch young children with computers in their hands concentrating on a small screen that can take them to any place in the world in seconds. They can take professional-level pictures of their friends as well as selfies (themselves) and send them anywhere they please, in just seconds. Good or bad—they have great power that in the recent past children never dreamed about having. As I recall in an earlier writing, I as a child, had comic books, and one featured a hero named Dick Tracy. The series followed this big city detective who was way ahead of his time, technologically. He wore a wrist radio with which he could be in contact with headquarters and each squad car as needed. This was at a time when home radios were still very poor. Few of them could bring a station of music or drama into a home without static interfering with the program. As a young boy, I remember trying to replicate that wrist radio with a cardboard cutout in the shape of the radio and tied to my wrist. I would talk to my friends, using my wrist radio, even though they were walking beside me. Now there is a movie about Dick Tracy.
What is ahead for our youth? Will there be robots who do all the manual labor? Will each person have their own robot to do their bidding? Will schools cease to exist because children will be using handheld computers before they can feed themselves? Will they have access to more information on their machines teaching them faster and more accurate information than schools will be able to provide? Computers may not only show them the answer to any question, but they will talk to them and maybe even be perfected to the point that they will be able to verify the skill level of their understanding of each subject before they will go on. Will our youth live in a time when they get in their car, type in the destination and then just lay back and wait until the car informs them that they have arrived? What’s ahead for them? Will food be measured out and packaged in individual units, and all they will have to do is select breakfast, lunch or dinner and drink down a perfect nutritional portion? No more cooking? No more tasty cuisine? Will various sports and athletics be the primary activity every day to keep them physically fit? Will they wear body suits that will monitor their bodily functions such as blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen level and lactic acid? Will they routinely visit space and maybe even other planets? I just hope that spiritual matters will not be lost in their enlightened world. Just “what is ahead” for our youth?