Last weekend, my sister, her daughter, and her daughter’s children came to town for a visit to the beach. You see, they all live in northern California where it is really, really hot in the summer and the beach is too far away for “a day at the beach.” So, they come here, where the beach is just a hop and a skip away.
Sure, it was great to see everyone, especially the kids, but the one thing that strikes me every time I spend time with young children these days is what they know and how they think. The young kids today are more capable and more technologically savvy than I was at their age, for sure. Of greater interest than this fact is that they are even more capable and more technologically savvy than even their older sisters and brothers who have grown up in a world filled with cell phones, computers, computer games, and every other technological device or product we use today.
I watched the 18-month-old child handle a cell phone and TV remote, and in both cases, the boy knew how to turn the device on and off with ease. As well, he could easily change the TV channel and control the volume. I watched the same child use an Apple iPad, and this is where my brain started firing. This young child sat there with the iPad fluently sliding his finger to move from app to app, matching this picture to that idea, verbally answering simple questions, and, more impressively, consciously choosing educational apps to work.
In yet another life of mine, I received a graduate degree in English. Now, to get that degree, I had to take more than a few courses in linguistics. In those courses, study and discussions of brain theory were common. I learned that the brain grows more from birth to five years of age than at any other time in our lives, and that the more stimulus a child has in that age range, the more neurons are created, which, essentially, makes for a more powerful brain.
When I was that age, we had books and flash cards, and we could handle them and look for information as the 18-month old did on the iPad, but the impressive difference between now and then, is the interactive stimulus the child of today receives when handling such educational materials. The vibrant color changes, the available interactive audio, the wide variety of material to choose from immediately, and the tactile stimulus of using fingers to find what you want or to type rudimentary answers to audible questions.
Aside from sharing a side of me, there is a point here, and that is that the children of today will be smarter than any of us “older” folks are now, and this intelligence will create and utilize technology that will make the best of today’s technology seem archaic. This combination will change the world as we know it, and it will happen in our lifetimes. In fact, the first generation of truly savvy “tech” children is now moving into positions of influence, into positions of innovation, and, more importantly, into positions of power. These folks are paving the way to a new, even more technological world, a world in which many of the issues that plague us today will vanish. What new issues will arise remains to be seen, but the medical advances alone should soften the blow of whatever ills new technology will bring.
All of this will open doors to investment possibilities, doors which right now are opening with startups and existing companies with strong R&D programs. So check out the children in your life, see what I mean, and then find somewhere innovative to put your money to work …
Trade in the day; invest in your life …
