Lights on Younger Generation!

Tumbled upon this link that talks about the younger generation is smarter, quicker and tolerant because they use the internet a lot. I almost fell out of my chair laughing. It was a funny article to read. A quick peek at history shows that fundamental human emotions haven't really changed. They are still the same. The only thing that has changed is the tools.

Tools have, time immemorial, have changed lifestyles but not humans. Starting from the time when man made fire from stones to the time we are working on stem cells to regenerate body parts, we have improved life span and made travel easy and access to information easy and nothing more than that. The notion that the younger generation is smarter is a flawed since it is based on the idea that they have easier access to information. Humans being emotional beings interpret data different ways. Societal notion of what is right and wrong determine whether a decision is smart or not. Societal notions of what is right and wrong changes, so what was considered a dumb decision a decade ago could be considered as a smart decision today. What can be considered as a smart decision today could be considered as dumb decision a decade from now.

I could agree with the notion that we are more tolerant to diversity, but I don't think it is a big deal and something to be proud of and look it as an achievement over the older generation. The tolerance of diversity is a by product of information exchange and is not something original. History has many examples of tolerance of diversity being there too. If there was no tolerance of diversity then would have been never been cultural and trade exchanges.

There is a cost to everything, the cost of generations that grow up on the net would manifest itself in the coming decades. It would be interesting to see what they would be. In the decades to come the definition of who is a human itself is going to change. It would be fun if stories of Isaac Asimov come true.

May you live in interesting times!

(which by the way is not a true Chinese curse)