The Tech Gap

It's funny, and a bit disorienting, to think about technological and economic change over time, rather than at fixed moments. Consider this: when Katie and I were toddlers, there were no cellphones (or possibly, at least, the only non-landline phones that existed were lumbering car phones), and while the personal computer had been developed, they were quite sparse and decidedly second-tier behind big mainframe computers. (Apple and Microsoft were still in their corporate  childhoods at the time.)

Now, our two-year-old, Liam, takes my cell phone (tiny compared to its predecessors) and pretends that it is a computer. Let me repeat: a two year old pretends that one technology is another technology, neither of which existed or were widespread when his parents were two! And Michelle Obama thinks this country is getting worse . . . 

Meanwhile, Liam became frustrated the other night when our Skype connection with Gram and Poppo was not good and we resorted to talking to them on our landline. Again, let me repeat: a two-year-old was frustrated that our web-based video phone was not working and refused to talk on the "ancient" technology of the telephone. 

So imagine what technological and economic change will occur in the next two decades of Liam and Gavin's lives: we can't even fathom it, really. And, as an aside, imagine the different wiring of their brains this will result in--in a good way. They will be x orders of magnitude smarter and cognitively advanced than their parents.