San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Technology is changing society; those who get it are the winners
I saw more graduation ceremonies in the past week than I had in my entire life.
They were all virtual, of course, young men and women celebrating a rite of passage on social media. Personally, I didn’t know any of the graduates, but, as is the case these days, someone invited me into their world by posting the pictures and uploading videos.
I didn’t know the one whose mom filled the house with Class of 2020 balloons. Or the one whose dad set up a stage on the driveway in front of two folding chairs: one for the grad and one for her mom. Or the one who walked across the backyard and shook hands with an Irish setter. They might have been informal, but they were well-earned; celebrations such as this will continue for the next couple of weeks, thanks to social distancing measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Having one’s party derailed by plague isn’t anything new. Poxes and such have gotten in humanity’s way before and, unless someone in a lab figures out a way to make us immune to everything, they will again. Pandemics, like wars, don’t care whether they get in the way of humanity’s plan. And economic downturns don’t care if they crash the after-party, bringing unemployment and social unrest as tag-alongs.
But this time, things are different — we have the internet. And, as those young men and women walking across the web and celebrating with the whole world showed, that’s something.
Former President Barack Obama posted a couple of commencement speeches online, one meant for high school seniors finishing school and the other for graduates of historically black colleges and universities. In both speeches, Obama pointed out that today’s young people are best equipped to make changes in how humanity gets things done.
“No generation,” Obama said, “has been better positioned to be warriors for justice and remake the world.”
He’s right. Boomers went to war, not just in Vietnam but over lunchroom counters and buses. Gen X’ers work hard at paying dues, waiting for the tireless boomers to retire. And millennials got Napstered and Friendstered before anybody figured out the parental controls. But if any group can pair experience and technology, it’s the group that can bring us together with the power of Zoom — provided we want to be together. Their plans might have changed, but as generations before can attest, that’s life. And with the help of the constantly changing internet, they can figure out how to pivot.
But they’re not the only ones. The city of San Antonio and Bexar County are trying to figure out how to use dollars from the federal CARES Act to retrain workers who found themselves unemployed during the shutdown. The idea is to reboot 5,000 workers through jobtraining courses at local colleges and universities, with an eye toward those in the service industry, which was hit hard by closures. This kind of aid opens a new window for workers, provided they’re not opposed to following the direction the young people are going.
Sadly, the internet can be fickle. When classes get tough, it’s easier to log off, switch screens to Netflix or just give up than to keep learning online. It’s easy to be distracted by memes that float conspiracy theories about why Kohl’s was closed while Walmart remained open. (Big refrigerated cases, that’s why.) It’s easy to share every single detail of your life with people you don’t know, or at least people whom you wouldn’t invite to your graduation if you actually thought they might show up. Then again, I think the young people figured that one out, too. Virtual is, after all, a legitimate reality.
The point is that technology has changed who we are. If there’s one thing the shutdown has shown us, it’s that those who don’t know a mortarboard from a motherboard are at a disadvantage, but that’s easily fixed with education and the idea that knowledge really is power.
It’s always been that way.