Dancing with Emma
Six year-old Emma (not her real name) came bounding home from kindergarten. She greeted me with a big hug and then, holding my hands, she climbed up my legs, planted her feet into my chest and did a back-flip to the floor. Next, she grabbed my hand, pulled me to the computer and clicked on a page of a children’s book to show me how well she can read. She typed out “I love you. Come and play with me tom…” she began to ask me how to spell “tomorrow” but the word popped up on the screen, so she just had to push a button to complete the sentence. “Print ” she said, and a copy of her invitation slid out of the printer.
Next, she opened a program that showed the two of us on the screen as it took a video. She tapped the keyboard and mirror images of us dancing appeared. She tapped it again and tiny red hearts fluttered between the two of us. Another tap produced blue birds flying in circles around her head. With a push of two more keys we are watching the video she had just made and she asked me what song to play in the background. “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine” came instantly to my mind.
Emma is my granddaughter. She is growing up in a world that constantly offers her new possibilities. She is delighted and excited, unaware that at her age it was amazing for me to see Howdy Doody through a friend’s window, after climbing up a four floor fire escape. She has TV, Apple TV, On Demand, an iPad, with many learning apps, games and videos, and an Echo She rides in a car that changes lanes and parks itself. She also has books, blocks, paints, markers and crayons.
Emma is fortunate to have loving parents who have a good relationship, good jobs, and a supportive extended family (not just me). She is living the upper-middle class American life, with too much stuff, and too many choices. Still, she seems to handle it well. She has been learning the old skills, such as reading, coloring and pumping a swing, and also the new ones that I struggle with, mostly with technology. Of course, when she gets hungry, cranky and tired, nothing works to her satisfaction.
My granddaughter was born three years after the first iPhone was sold. YouTube was already showing 14 billion videos a month. Since her birthday the CSRP-R gene editing technique has been developed, which will eventually eliminate many birth defects, and perhaps help her design her own child. Nanotechnologies are being developed which will deliver medicines directly into cells. There have been improvements in battery technology, solar collectors, and more wind farms have been built which will offer new sources of energy. The Internet of Things has connected our houses with our shopping, our calendars, our friends, or banks, and music. Both Google and Amazon have learned more about us than we know about ourselves. Several of Emma’s friends were conceived in a petri dish and have two parents of the same sex.
But also, the polar ice caps continue to melt at an increasing rate. Refugees are fleeing war, poverty and drought and overwhelming the more developed countries. Reacting to that, many of those countries are retreating behind nationalistic, xenophobic governments. There is a terrorist attack somewhere almost every week that receives a great deal of attention, and keeps everyone fearful. The threat of cybercrime, hackers and international cyber-warfare seems to increase every day, especially as the new U.S. President seems to enjoy being provocative.
What guidance can I give to Emma besides just “be a kid and have fun?” which I think is still the most important advice a GrandPops can offer. There are so many things she probably won’t have to learn that were so necessary for my survival. She won’t have to learn to write, as she can already type, or even dictate, to a machine and it will write it for her, in any font, color or style she chooses. She adds emojis to clarify the emotion. Or, she can just make a video and skip verbal communication altogether.
I had to learn arithmetic. Then came calculators. Now Emma just asks Siri or Alexa or Google to give her the square root of 2345 (48.3252, I just asked). She can jst ask for any information: who the President was before Lincoln? or how far it is to the moon? What is a quark? These things would have taken me hours, or even days to find — if I knew where to look.
By the time she is old enough to get a driver’s license she probably won’t need to drive. She can ask her electronic assistant, (R2-D2?) to order a self-driving Uber. By then the “assistant” will know her schedule and have it waiting for her.
Will she go to college? What will college be like by then? Will most of it be on-line and channeled right into everyone’s homes? Will her classmates be from all around the world, and they will meet in small groups by putting on a Virtual Reality headsets? Will the “class” be taught by her electronic assistant? Will people still go to an actual college campus for two years just to leave home, network, have parties and consensual sex?
What will she do after college? Half of the adult women she knows are doctors, work for Google, or a bio-tech company. The other half stay home with their kids, wear Lulu Lemon all day, drink wine and make organic snacks. Will she seek a job growing genetically modified crops to feed the world, or make an augmented reality app which inspires children to grow up and take care of their grandparents? Perhaps, by the time she is fifty, everyone will be working only six hours a week and receive a guaranteed annual income. The rest of the work will be done by robots, and most of the decisions will be directed by algorithms and artificial intelligence. I think about this as Emma and I dance to the rhythm of a beatbox app that thumps out a strong base line.
All of this could happen within the next five to fifty years. It’s difficult to tell how fast it will come. Some of it will work and some won’t. It’s exciting. It’s frightening. What is clear is that the transition won’t be smooth. People resist changes, even when they would be beneficial.
Will this be a world that offers freedom and prosperity to all? A world in which everyone will have the security, education and skills to be creative, caring, and healthy? Will most people find ways to live the lives they choose; lives that are fun and fulfilling? It could be a world in which people will feel connected and enjoy being together. We are social animals. We feel better in supportive relationships.
I have too many doubts. I have worked closely with all kinds of people for my entire career. I have seen how some people quickly take advantage of other people’s weaknesses. Emma has already told me that some of the girls in her kindergarten class are mean to other girls. Some girls always push to be first. Others boast about having new things that other kids don’t have. She has also told me that she was frightened when one boy pushed someone down. Another boy got so angry that he threw a block across the room.
I know too well that humans have limitations. We are still a primitive species. Almost all of us are basically good and kind, but we can change quickly if we feel threatened. We have evolved to be very sensitive to all possible threats. That’s how we have survived. We have to recognize immediately if whatever is rustling in the bushes thinks we are a friend or food. One wrong reaction could mean we won’t get another chance. Humans are irrational. We count on our emotions to guide us.
It makes me wonder if all of this new technology and easy access to all kinds of information will be shared equally, or if it will be proprietary, and sold to those who can pay for it. There is the hope that these algorithms can help people make better decisions about what to eat, how to spend money, how to resolve conflicts, and will help everyone enjoy the benefits of scientific advances. There is the fear the the same technology can be used to manipulate people, influence their thoughts and divide everyone into classes of exploiters and exploited. This seems to be what humans have done for centuries.
How do I explain my concerns to a six year-old as we dance to Ariana Grande, and she askes why I don’t let her watch the video? I have done a pretty good job of passing my values down to both of my children, and they, and their spouces, are all good parents of their children. I want my grandchildren to be caring, curious and creative. I want them to be open to new ideas and new people. I want them to be able to experience the satisfaction of working to make the world a better place for everyone. And yet they have be aware that there are people who would take advantage of them, and others who could harm them. They have to learn whom to trust and whom to drive away.
Emma will have so many more choices than were available to me. Choices of how to live, where to live, who to be with, how to communicate, places to travel, where to work and how to work. Hopefully, medicine will be better; many more diseases will be treatable or eliminated. I’ve read that Emma’s life expectancy is 103.
Despite all of the new technologies, new discoveries, and new realities, there is one skill that we need to teach all of our children, a skill that we can’t allow machines to do for us, and that is critical thinking. This ability is what will determine who survives and thrives. More than even our children have to learn how to determine what is real from what is distorted. They have learn how to get as close to the truth as possible, especially when it shows that something they believe is wrong. They have to be able to evaluate which, of all these new technology offerings, is really useful for them, and which are manipulative or just distractions. We all have to realize that we are emotional and what really separates us from all of the new technology is that we care.
How do I teach Emma to be open and curious, yet questioning and skeptical? I want her to feel that the world is fascinating, friendly and fun, and yet to realize there are real dangers. She shouldn’t be frightened, but she needs to be aware. I want her to have the confidence in her own skills and her own judgement, so that she knows how to take care of herself.
So we start with the basics. She should learn to trust me, her parents and others who really care for her. She should understand why we tell her not to eat too much candy or jump off of tree limbs. She should know why the moon and sun appear to be the same size, but they’re not. Learn how to meet new people and assess what’s going on, like when she asked, “What’s it called when you say something that’s not true, but you think it’s funny? Oh yeah, sarcasm.” She needs to learn what it means to have a friend and to be a friend.
As she demonstrates good judgement we can let have more freedom. She can learn that making mistakes is important, because that is part of the way we learn.
As she develops her own skills of critical thinking and cause and effect, she can see that life can be fun, fascinating and satisfying. She can make her way through the world and decide where she wants to go, what she wants to do and with whom. Good values, good judgement and behavior are what constitute a worthwhile human being. The more Emmas there are, the better the world will be.
Hopefully, she will remember how much her GandPops cares for her, and she will keep in touch with him. She can show him what’s cool, and we can dance.
