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In 2009 Yat Siu sold Outblaze's messaging division to IBM
and he successfully put Outblaze from b2b messaging services to a
b2c digital entertainment
company. He is the director of TurnOut Ventures
and that's a partnership between Outblaze and Turner Entertainment.
And he's also the cofounder of Animoca, a major developer and publisher of
smartphone games.
I'd also like to encourage you to check out a website of his which is
called
ThinkBlaze, thinkblaze.com, which specializes
in looking at children and the use of computers, and I'm sure that Yat will
be telling you a little bit more about that this afternoon.
Ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming Yat Siu.
Thank you. So first,
I have to say that this is a little different for me
because usually I'm not used to speaking to a crowd of women
in my industry. This is quite unusual so
thank you for that. So I'm a parent,
I am interested in technology because of my business, and
often my non-techie friends ask me questions all the time
about sort of children and technology. I have three kids of my own
eight, five and three, and usually they ask me questions about is
the use of Internet good, how can I control what they're doing.
But as it turns out, it's not actually just the parents who are concerned
because the
kids out there who are on Facebook
have some real issues with parents joining Facebook as well.
And there's a bunch of communities most famous one of them being
Oh crap my parents joined Facebook, and it's a fun community.
We won't go over each and every one of the quotes but essentially is a refuge
for
people who have their parents join Facebook, and I deeply embarrassed or
humiliated by that.
And the concern seems to be valid
because by parents' own admission the
vast majority seem to join Facebook so they can spy on their kids.
In some ways if you project that to yourself and say well you know
facebook is kind of open, I can see everything that you do, you probably would wanna go
and sneak in a little and find out what the kids are doing,
or make silly comments. The reaction of course is that there's a whole little pocket industry
that has emerged helping children basically determine whether they should
friend their parents are not.
Complex flowcharts designs
and you know do you friend them because you care if your parents like everything
you do,
for instance. But if you get drunk or a few other things that kind of
maybe not really meeting the approval of the parents, they aren't going to friend them
or in some cases you unfriend them which is kinda
humiliating if you're a parent because it's kind of like saying
in a way you know the kids won't love you. But therein lies essentially the first
major generation gap between basically one generation
of children, in this case Gen Y, and the baby boomers
which perhaps is some of them here although I think most of us are basically probably
in the gen-x pocket, which is basically that we would be
as an older generation will be looking at Facebook as a tool as a quasi
utility
and what's the big deal I'm actually just there to get information. Whereas
for
the younger generation basically facebook is virtual equivalent of their
bedroom.
They hang out with thier friends, they meet people there, they chat
openly. The whole notion of privacy is not really there. But if suddenly
mom starts ticking her face into this, it's the same as if mom sitting in the
bedroom
listening to everything the kids are talking about, and that's why they
unfriend them.
So it's a dilemma. What is Generation Y?
Generation Y basically is
the first major generation that grew basically immersed
in technology. The other thing also is that
that technology in generations there's an aspect there in terms of how
they relate with each other and I'm going to that first by explains a
fundamental so bear with me please,
because I think it's important to understand the future
by understanding these basic technology laws first.
So first laws of technology. The first major law
that is important is Moore's Law. For some of you who don't know it,
it's basically this is a logarithmic chart. It's very technical. Don't worry about
what the numbers say,
but what it basically means is that essentially the number of
transistors that you essentially can squeeze into basically
a semiconductor chip in essence, which basically means you just get more more
power.
And as time went on essentially you're able to basically put
in the same surface area 2.6 billion transistors. Translated in a different
way
if this room were to house or a musical equivalent,
2300 users 2300 people are
in the seventies, today that same room
would not change in size but would house the entire population of China.
Now if you conceptualize that
that basically means that you have so much more powers, so much more resources,
so much more information that you can process. The other way to look at it is
the fastest computer which is the Cray supercomputer, which
I'm not sure if anyone here actually knows what that is, but maybe which was
a computer that was basically living room furniture.
is now actually fifteen times less powerful
than your average smartphone. So you're carrying basically
a supercomputer of not even three decades ago.
So that basically is Moore's Law and Moore's Law has been uncannily accurate,
and for the next several decades, it will continue to be the case,
which basically means things will be more powerful, things will be more faster
on the CPU front. So essentially your smart phone or your computer power that
you have is going to be eclipsed
in just a matter of years, and you probably see it anyway
when you buy a new phone or when you use a computer, but because you're living in it
and you're in the middle of it, you probably don't actually realize
that the CPU power in there is just so crazy.
There's two more laws which is important to know before I could keep going.
The other one is Kryder's Law which is a similar equivalent
to basically hard disk space. It's basically the same thing.
Hard disk are just going to get cheaper in a similar kind of logarithmic
sort of accelerative scale,
which is a reason why when you buy an SD card, it is cheaper and is also the reason why
you probably taking lots of pictures on your digital camera, and not throwing
anything away
because essentially you don't have to. You can store everything and store everything.
And that has implications for the future. Because essentially everything is stored.
Finally there's Nielsen's Law of Bandwidth which is a slightly smaller scale of
growth, but it's the same thing in terms of internet speed.
If you consider where we're actually two decades ago we were using
basically no broadband everything was on dollar, we're on speeds that we simply
couldn't
actually use if you consider in today's generation,
and now we're basically on super fast access speed, and the speed will continue
to grow and grow and grow.
And once you combine the three technologies together,
would generally move in tandem, you basically get an understanding as to
why technology grew to where it is today,
and how technology is going to continue to dominate the landscape
in the next several decades, because data is going to be bigger
in an exponential manner. Speed or the power of the computer is gonna be
more powerful, and of course bandwidth its going to be more available.
And that is the environment that a kids are growing up in, and so everything
will become digitized.
Your shoes will probably have micro-chip in there. People already doing it anyway
in terms of the
running equipment that's out there. The microwave will have it.
The whole home will be intelligent.
Everything will basically be wired.
So, let's step back. Now that you know
basically little bit about the basic fundamentals of
where the tech, the industry is headed. Generations Z is basically were
probably most of
our children in this room, I'm going to guess
are which is basically anyone was born somewhere the late 90's
to now, and they're growing up in an environment that is completely immersed
in technology.
It's normal, it's natural to them, they don't even think of it as something
unusual. Whereas for most of us, when we got a computer,
we were probably in our teens, we were like wow look at this toy, it is really
interesting.
It's got keys and stuff and it had 64k which is like incredible
storage.
But now basically the iPad is coming with 64 GB,
and we're already complaining that it hasn't
got enough space. So that's the environment that they're going to grow up in
and already growing up in. Let's talk about generations,
because I think understanding previous generations and understanding how
generation work
might help us get a better idea as to
understanding our children in this new world of technology. Now this is a
classic
generation overview, which basically you know generally generations are divided
by
twenty to thirty year gaps based on sort of you know when the next generation is
born,
and the other trait that they generally tend to have similar
experiences
that tie them together.
We are in generation X generally speaking, maybe some baby boomers,
and perhaps some generation Y people in this crowd.
What we did in our research was we actually
put together Moore's law
and matched that essentially against the various generations.
We found some interesting stuff here because basically we said well that's
interesting.
Look at those different generation basically match against
computing, and how this technology affects that.
And something with found that's kinda odd is. If you look at the generation Z
as the most recent example,
over the last 12 years, we're supposed to believe essentially that generation has
a very similar relationship
to a person was born essentially in the late 90's and a person who was born just
today.
And that may have been true in the Baby Boomers or in Generation X.
Where people born in the 70's or 80's tend to have a similar
experience or knowledge base with let's say their parents or relative
children, but in Generation Z we're not so sure about that anymore.
Because the iPhone is only six years old.
If you consider what the iPhone did to the industry basically,
not just you know create a crazy market cap for Apple, but everyone in this room
is likely to have a smartphone
for instance. And the way you interact with that has changed
everything in the industry. If you take a look
even deeper, just a sampling of the change,
and this is not when it was launched. Its just when it became influential.
I mean less in a decade ago Google was not a verb,
an application was something you filled out for university or college,
tweeting was for birds, and the cloud is something you found in the sky.
But right now all these terms have been usurped
by technology, and the notion of those of those terms essentially for
the younger generation, Tweeting and birds, no relationship. It's about sending a
message,
and googling is the same thing as going to the Encyclopedia Britannica
except it was more like it's a sort of a search term.
So all that has changed, and that only happened really in the last five to ten
years.
So also looking at
just what technology has done to markets, caps, and companies.
For those in the finance industry might be appealing, is that just looking at the
most recent one,
I think I took that from a few weeks ago, four companies in the top 10
US market cap are technology,
interesting enough, in the top 10, there's no banking, no accounting, and no legal.
The last ten years, five of them have gone over half a billion dollars in
market cap
of which four of them were technology companies.
If you look at even take a closer look, two over the top three companies
in that list, Apple and Google, have been created
during our lifetime.
Just think about that in terms of the context of massive companies
creating massive cultural change that were created essentially
while we were already alived. That concept
is unprecedented. In fact Google
is a teenager and the web is just graduated from university.
So we're looking at an accelerated generational gap.
The notion of the existing generations can no longer apply
in our view. And for those of you who are familiar with the work of
Dr. Larry Rosen,
he's already define many generations for Generation Y, but basically
splitting up between the Net Generation and the I Generation.
The way that he looks at it is basically the Net Generation is a generation that
basically
is used to sort out more voice, but is in the beginning of the technology areas
browsing so on.
Whereas the I Generation is essentially much more accustomed to basically
the iTouch and the iPhone, not exactly the iPhone, but touch type of stuff,
and also instant messaging for instance more so. So they were more happy to
basically send a message to communicate with someone
rather than to make a phone call. And we already see this in the workplace
because today the relationships that someone has
in their mid-thirties or late thirties versus someone who is in their
mid-twenties to the late twenties
is actually miles apart in terms of the understanding and in terms of how they
interact
at the workplace. Therefore would be the same in other areas.
Now reaching why they haven't defined the term Touch
Generation or whatever Generation
is a generation that is gonna grow up in an area where the
keyboard is likely going to be completely irrelevant.
By the time that they are going to enter essentially college,
there's probably not gonna be a computer as we know it, if you look at the way that
Windows market share declining.
So as
Moore's law continues to compress in terms of speed
of technology, and the availability of technology becomes much
more powerful and available,
we believe the generations are going to compress even further.
And the implication for that is that essentially in our household even,
if you have more than one child, two, three, four, over perhaps a ten years span.
you may actually already be sitting with two generations right there.
Because if you consider how they interact
with technology. In the case of my son he expects a computer and keyboard.
He's a little older. In the case in my youngest, if the screen doesn't swipe, it's broken.
So he's gonna learn that there's a computer of course,
but is a natural instinct to him, because that's the environment that he
grew up in.
This is also shown in research outside. The technology generation gap is just
widening.
And I think the widening happens not only because of technology by itself but
also because actually
we're actually divided into multiple generations. So instead of looking at it
in thirty-year terms,
thirty-year terms really probably means more like three or four different
generation gaps already.
And so the generation gap that we're seeing today becomes
that much more pronounced.
With that also comes with our understanding of our children in the
future,
because the interaction with technology is getting younger and younger and
younger,
and who knows? I mean I think everyone here has probably had a
or a fair number of people here, have let their toddlers play with the iPad
already.
What does this is all mean?
First of all, the future. If you're thinking that you can prepare your child for the future,
for a job that you think he should be doing. The odd are already started against
you
in a big way. According to the United States
Department of Labor, sixty-five percent of today's great school kids will be
doing jobs that
haven't yet been invented. Actually I think that this is a small number
They are being conservative, I think. But anyway the point is
that whatever you thought you could prepare for them in the future
isn't true anymore, and therefore
how do you prepare for the such an uncertain environment? The only thing
that is certain is that it is uncertain, because you cannot imagine
necessarily what will happen two decades from now when they graduate from
university.
In fact, is University even needed?
The only thing you know is that there's more technology and crazier technology.
Whether it's in biomedicine, whether it's a material sciences,
whether it's in just in computers, you don't know what it is though. You also know
that there's a widening generation gap that is not just at work but at home,
due to personal relations. Everything will basically continue to widen in
terms of the gap of knowledge.
In fact some of people here may even remember Friendster and MySpace,
maybe. The other thing is
the no limits relationship which we can already witness with Generation Y today
and will be even more pronounced
when our children are older, which is that there is no such thing as limits. Right
now we're just getting to the concept of cloud.
By the time our children are there, the concept of clowd does not even going to be
a concept, it's just gonna be there,
which is everything will be downloaded. And if you
look at for instance how different generations just interact and use their
email,
older generations will clean out the inbox.
Methodically they take it out, they take stuff out, they organize it
and put it in folders, the way that they were taught in school
several decades ago. Today's generation,
leaves it at all there and searches it. there's a giant pile of mess,
so if you go on take a look at your kids email
when they're older, if they're still using it, you can't find anything
because you're not doing it in the way that
they're used to. The same goes for any kind of data.
The other topic is multitasking. It's something that comes up a lot.
I thought I should spend a little bit more time with that, because of course the
environment
in which children are growing up, is going to be in the deeply, so called
multitasking environment.
I'll explain a little bit more because I think there's some sort of
areas that new research showing about the area of multitasking is it good for
you or it is bad for you
and so forth. First of all,
multitasking isn't actually about doing ten things at the same time in the way
that we understood
or believed it to be. Because actually
that would be like writing two essays at the same time. That's not actually
possible and we don't actually do that.
In fact what people do when it comes to methodical tasks is what people
describe as task switching.
And really another way to look at it is
managing interruptions. Dr. Rosen makes a nice point
about sort of all of these technologies being sort of weapons of
mass distraction.
But the other way to look at it perhaps is that
kids today are managing these interruptions better because it's
something was described
as a resumption lag which is basically how quickly can you recover from the
interruption,
and therefore switch from one segment one other. And it is in early form of
research,
but early forms of research seems to indicate that essentially younger
generations are better at recovering from the resumption lag, and I'm going to
some of that right now, which is basically that
with cues and interruptions and a resumption lags, there seem to be some indications
of
early studies that essentially in certain tasks
or in certain set-ups, it is actually improving
your work efficiency. Perhaps the best example in this one
is to look at your own work. Do you actually
work at your office on a single task for two hours at a time?
Or do you actually break up your tasks? And what are you most comfortable with?
And certainly with the younger generations they are comfortable with breaking it up,
and what they seem to indicate is for visual tasks in particular,
if it's broken up, its the kinda virtual equivalent
of getting up, going for walk, and going back and doing the work except you're
basically doing something else.
A good example of that is in web browsing. If you take a look at
how web browsing has evolved. In the
sort of early nineties when people were using Netscape,
or Mosaic if anyone here remembers that, it was a single browser.
It was designed for a single environment where people just went to the browser
looked at it and went on. Just kind of like you know like
just a magazine if you will.
But something happened, as a computers became more powerful,
and were able to load more of the browser into memory, they started putting
up multiple windows.
Multiple windows which we might look at as maybe multitasking or distraction.
But for them it was actually more like cue management, almost like post-it notes.
so I'm gonna read about something here, but okay I'm done with that, but I don't want
to delete it,
I want to move on to the next browser, and I don't know how many people here
browse in that way today.
Okay, not many hands up here. Generational thing
Okay, but anyway
from a product standpoint, people recognized it at Google,
at Mozilla, at IE, and they introduced
tabbed browsing for exactly that reason. That is why you have tabbed browsing,
to basically handle even though it may or may not have been researched that way
basically resumption lags in cues for
internet browsing to be able to jump from one segment to another,
because they realized from the data they received that
users were engaging in browsing at least happier
or more efficiently in that manner. So they introduced tabbed browsing.
The indication here, the soft indication here, would be
that's what we prefer, that's how we want to consume information,
that's how we want to consume data It doesn't mean
that you're actually doing them at the same time. You're doing one thing and another. It's
just you're
hopping around and you're happy doing so and therefore you're more efficient
as opposed to doing something single-mindedly. If we feel that we are
at work and not able to concentrate on a task for two hours at a time,
because we lose focus or we need a break. Yet we do that for kids when we're giving them
homework,
we have to maybe do some self-reflection.
So there's some other things here
about rewiring the brain. Is technology rewiring the brain?
Some people say yes, some people say no.
Um, maybe I will ask for a poll.
Today, when you wake up in the morning, do you pick up your phone first thing in the
morning?
Please raise your hand. You are rewired, guys,
girls. All of you, all of you have
already changed your habits because of the technology.
Ten years ago it was not possible. You get up, brush your teeth,
you know whatever, maybe say good morning. I mean I don't know how many people who say good
morning before they actually access their phone.
I won't ask a question but that's basically
an example of essentially how your brain is already being rewired.
If you think about that for children, they're just growing up to that environment.
For them that's not even thinking of rewiring, it is just where they are.
If it's okay for us, why isn't it is okay for kids? Well I guess we need to talk about
that.
But essentially some of the research shows
that the modern mind is being changed.
And what's interesting also is this: not just the modern mind in terms of kids,
but it's also clearly us who are supposed to
not be able to learn new things. I will get to that a little bit later.
So an example of children in terms of the rewired environment
is that on average teenagers today average around 1700 text messages month;
Forty-two percent of teenagers say they can text blindfolded;
Sixty percent of teenagers basically don't look at texting and writing as the
same thing.
Writing is a formal skill. And what's really interesting on that research
is that actually those who write and text aren't necessarily
are actually not worse at it, because they're switching out essentially texting
in the way that we switch out a different language.
If they're sending LOLs and
shortcuts and all that kind of stuff that you
may not be familiar with. That's okay because that's the net lingo
they use with their friends.
But if you communicate with them over the phone, they're gonna send to you
in short form. And you're gonna "oh my goodness my children,
they have problems because they forgot how to write."
But if you actually ask them to write you an email which is formal to them,
then they will do so.
And they actually able to handle the spelling. It's not actually a problem
according to the research, so it's interesting as well that they treat them
differently.
They code-switch. Ninety-one percent over the same group basically say to they use
social networking to stay in touch. I think we know that already, but
interestingly enough forty-nine percent say
they make new friends that way, and that is probably deeply scary
too many parents here I'm sure, because essentially they don't really know them
and they make friends that way.
But that generation, it's normal for them.
Finally on the topic of task switching,
on average they seem to task switch around, on average, eleven minutes,
and while that hasn't been more deeply studied, there is a question here
as to when if we want to optimize sort of
let's say our learning or educating with our children.
Do we look at it in smaller time slots rather than a longer time slot
because essentially that's how they want to work best.
It's not something I've done much research on yet, but it is something that
is in discussion.
One thing that is also important is about neuroplasticity. I don't know
how many
here are familiar with this concept of the plastic brain.
Right. Great. A few. So very briefly
explain that essentially neuroplasticity in general
is something that is quasi-throwing out some of the old concepts about
essentially the old brain, which is that you know left brain is
for logical right brain is for creative or whatever, because essentially
you get to a certain age and that's it, your brain is stuck.
But if it is true, then none of us would be picking up our
cell phones in the morning which we didn't do 5 years ago
as a sort of simple example. And what it really means is that we're able to learn
new things,
and essentially the brain, the synapses starts firing off and exercising your brain
in different things, in new tasks and tools that you weren't doing before.
That's happening all the time, so technology isn't just wiring younger
generations,
it is also wiring newer generations, but this is all relatively new.
But it does challenge traditional thinking as to educating
in terms of you know what we have to make sure that everything's right for
the kids at a younger age,
because essentially that's it. Once you are teenager, your brain starts to die and
you're screwed.
That's, at least, what I was taught.
Another thing that was interesting was a brain scan test
that UCLA did about people who were internet-savvy versus who were
internet-naive.
And not enough research has been done on that, and of course the headlines were
pretty dramatic.
But what it basically showed is that those who understood the web
and this was also done people who were not young but they were in their fifties
and sixties,
those who understood the web already were basically given Google to use
versus those who weren't, and they were also given classic essentially reading
exercises to search for information.
What they discovered was that reading books, both of them basically had a
similar neural activity.
But for those who are basically internet-savvy, they were able to
basically
they got a lot more brain activity and appear to be getting much
more out of it.
And of course the headline was Google makes you smarter. I mean that's
debatable, but it does show something about the rewiring of the brain,
and also an indication as to where children are when they use technology,
to be more comfortable with it, to fluid with it and it engages in more
neuroactivity.
I wanna split into a story here about
Oh, sorry. There is a nice quote by Dr. Gary Small
which I thought would be good to share. "Young people are born into technology.
their brains are wired to use it elegantly." I think it's a nice way to
phrase it,
you may disagree of course.
I wanna break into a story which is
purely serendipitous because it wasn't intended to be,
which is at MIT basically a bunch of
wizzkids a PhD, EE engineers, biomedical engineers
came together, actually few years ago, to try to design something
that will measure essentially brain and neural activity
for health reasons and to make it very comfortable. And so
that eventually became a product like the Jawbone Up which you put around
your wrist.
That basically measures how well you sleep and so forth. So they're measuring that
activity and they put it on basically student at MIT to basically go through
coursework for a period of one week to see if the system would work,
and it worked fabulously. The data came out, they were plotting neural
activity,
and it was from research stand point, a success.
But something else came out is usually does when research data
is released to the Internet,
which is that if you note the area where the brain was in near coma
was in class and was shared only
with roughly the kind of TV thing, so maybe is a form of relaxation.
But that made me think a little, because basically
in general the headline was student's brain flatlined during classes.
I think we can maybe relate to that, because we've probably been at lectures where
we're like
dozing off and nodding off. What's even more interesting is
look at sleeping. That is a mental workout.
So what's going on here?
It is not entirely clear of course,
but one thing that does seem to indicate is essentially as for me when I was
looking at this as like: Hold a second,
we're trying to get our kids in the college. This is MIT, right? This is not
you know some any old college,
although they probably good too, they're supposed to be the brightest kids
now getting into the top engineering schools,
and they are in coma during class. So what can we do?
What decision I mean you know we're saving up money to send our kids so
they can be
brain-dead? I mean that's not the way to do it, and
of course
the thinking of course today and more advance the Dr. Porter talk
about as well, research
shows that essentially learning through engagement
clearly you can see lab work shows a lot more activity,
not as much as sleep though still. And even homework because I think the
element of homework even though
it is probably debatable, the thing about homework is he still has to go out and
search and do work himself maybe,
or its collaborative, who knows, that wasn't qualified.
But clearly listening to lectures wasn't it
And that is the next thing
of change is happening, because education and learning is
up for big big change. In fact
in most industries people look at learning as the part that is going to be
completely sort of
changed if you know if the environment will let them do so.
And because everything's on the cloud, the way that you search information
on Google,
use Khan Academy to get videos and knowledge, use Coursera for public
coursework. All of that is available and openly available to you today.
But the other thing that's interesting is I want to share was
Teachers Pay Teachers which is
one of many open source
coursework places where you can basically download coursework
that is very individualized to
your child's need. And this is part of what makes Internet work so great which is
that
you can find something that maybe is suitable for your children
because the teacher somewhere in Alabama or I don't know somewhere in Italy
basically designed a course that was specific for their kids in the classroom
that you might find useful. And some of them can strike it big.
In this case a teacher made a million dollars over a few years selling those
lesson plan online.
But in general it is another form where basically learning
changes and where you can find other resources and tools
to essentially perhaps enhance your curriculum and ideas that are available
to you.
So we did a study
with City University (of Hong Kong). We basically donated tablets
to a school in Hong Kong, and the goal was to basically see what would
happen if the entire school was basically just using tablets
for a certain period of time. And the studies are still ongoing but some of the,
First we didn't actually go in to study
specific tablet-based curriculums, but we did go in basically doing
classic curriculum, I mean
normal course work that is government-approved,
but via the tablet. What was interesting
in the initial findings was that children,
girls were okay with it but boys really loved it.
They were very motivated using it.
What's also interesting is that the actual
academic performance was for at least the classic coursework
the same, we haven't yet tested other forms of course work
because
some outside research seems to indicate that if you use a tablet, memory
retention is supposed to be better.
But we haven't seen that ourselves yet. But what is interesting of course is that if
you give a tablet
within existing curriculum, it doesn't seem to be detrimental in any event.
But the boys perceived that their performance was better.
they were more optimistic about the results than the girls at the
younger age. By the time they reach grade 6,
they actually ended up being rather similar which is also interesting.
And these test results were in reading academic and memory retention.
So, I'm gonna close up soon but some future fundamentals for
the group here to consider and think about, which is that,
first I think we noticed but it's worth mentioning, software is eating the world.
Everything you're doing today is using software in one form or the other.
Not just because you're using a phone, but because of the traffic lights around the
software.
Because basically you know I'm presenting this on a computer, because
you know you're texting, messaging, you're communicating, you're at work,
you're at home, you know even the new light city switching on its all using
software of one form the other. And so what that really means is
that we've this huge group of consumers and software
but we don't have a lot of people who know how to code. It's equivalent of
knowing how to read but not to write.
And you know that wasn't so great for
the middle ages I suppose. If you look at this,
code is, in our view,
a language the way that you look at
French or Chinese and it also is a deliverer of culture and I'll
briefly go over some examples as to why we believe that.
First, this is the very first time that there is a language that basically connects
people globally
because the computer is the essentially the framework,
so everything is very rigid, so you have to communicate
through that system. So it happened to be in the English language
but basically if I'm coding in China and if I'm coding in
US or if I'm coding in Russia, actually I can share that code
which is what's happening because I understand it.
It's like as if everyone spoke the same kind of English, but as we know
today English isn't spoken the same everywhere around the world.
So it's actually better that way.
It's also without boundaries and I think
a big reason why there's a lot of flattening in the world is because
essentially
all the products we are using is delivered through this code.
Because we all using Google no matter where we are, except China.
And it is a creative process because you're developing and you're creating something
using these tools.
And finally it is a democratic tool, because essentially everyone can code and
everyone can deliver.
I think that thinking and that mindframe is basically what gets people
to sort of the new generation if you think about what their expectations are
in terms of the workplace, and what our children's expectations are when they join the
workplace. They're gonna be growing up in the world
which is completely coded in this democratic
setup where they're thinking in their own ways essentially
that they're going to have you know like a good example is
three or four decades ago when you joined a company, fun wasn't part of the
equation typically.
But today all young employees, at least in our business,
expect to join an operation that is fun. And that is
open and everyone talks about the open workplace and so on,
and that we think it is in large part because of code.
So is programming the new Chinese? Not sure, but we think it's a good thing for
people to learn
because the whole world is run by code. And if you want to be able to decode it
and if you want to be able to actually translate it,
you ought to know a little about it. You don't need to be experts but
you want to be fluent in this new generation and you want our children to be fluent
in it.
Maybe we need to teach some of that. There's some good examples for that that are not
necessarily just based on
code which is sort of numbers and so on. Scratch is a very good
tool for young children basically
which is a visual programming tool. It just teaches the concepts of it,
where you can connect them but essentially you don't have to worry basically about
you know difficult sort of coding languages: You look at it and say oh my goodness
that's difficult.
But I'm sure a lot of people look at Chinese will think the same way, or
French or whichever other language. The other one of course a popular one is Lego
Mindstorms.
But Scratch is free and Lego Mindstorms costs a bomb.
Take your pick.
The other thing that I want to raise was about game design and gamification.
And I raise this point, there's a bunch of other ones, but I raise this point because
I think
gaming has had a bit of a bad rap among parents.
And to first qualify what is game design
which happens in computing and product is the process of designing content and
rules of the game.
We think of it as monopoly, or chess,
or angry birds, but some of us think of it as the oldest form game design, one
of the very old ones,
essentially school grades, which is another form of game design
to try to sort of incentivize and motivate our children to do better
by grading them and ranking them and rating them.
And so in fact I would say that we have been basically
giving them a form of gamification already at a very young age. I wouldn't say it's
a good one,
but it's there.
The consequence of gaming
is that actually for those of you who have tried it with your children,
maybe not lot of you, is that it is actually
a lot of research points to the fact that game is actually good for kids,
in moderation and in a controlled environment of course. It's an optimistic
activity.
There's a lot of motivation and problems solving it. I mean very rarely do you get
kids who say "I don't wanna be on the computer and play a game".
At so it's just what kind of games are playing and how you manage that.
They're happy. It's goal oriented and there's always a problem to solve
and there's a strong motivating factor.
And so a lot of research is now pointing to the fact that gaming is actually a good
activity.
And I'll go basically a little bit detail later to basically maybe how we can
benefit from that more. And so
I don't know if you've older kids, how many of you know about Minecraft?
I see a lot of sighs. Well, I got something for you.
MAMA which is the Moms Against Minecraft Addiction association.
I don't agree with it but it is something
that obviously is a big sticky point for a lot of parents because they say"ahh",
you know they are addicted to it, sitting on the side and doing nothing but Minecraft" and so
on.
And would you say the same if they were doing Lego?
If they were always building Lego. I don't know,
but it's actually the same thing in many ways. It's just virtual.
And are we projecting that image
of because they're not using their fingers?
But instead maybe they're using more neural activity, not sure, because you know to be
very good in Minecraft, you actually have to code a little.
Because you have to connect stuff and you have to actually write stuff,
which you don't have to do in Lego. I'm not saying
that there's no physical outdoor activity at all,
it's just that how are they wired, and how are they thinking,
and is it really that bad because they seem to enjoy it, and can you manage it
the same way that you manage
any activity that they like, and are we looking at
video games the same way that we're looking at TV
as a sort of one way street and therefore we project that and
say "oh, you know, they're becoming sort of zombies watching it"
because that's what we see. We basically see
people on screens looking at it, their eyes glued to it,
and lifeless children so to speak.
But what they see is something different. They see a colorful world,
it's fun, it's creative, they interact with people.
It's virtual but we are not there with them.
So we don't know this, we don't feel it.
In some ways, are we doing a disservice by just
saying don't do it? Because we don't understand it
which is very common.
I'll close it with a question which is "what if?"
Our children are just wired in such a way
which we don't really understand because of the generation gap,
and because we are not fully engaged because we don't understand it,
and because we're trying to sort of
put our own standard of what we think is right
for our children because that's what how we grew up.
But we grew up in a different environment, different education system,
less technology. And are we actually maybe holding them back, because we're thinking
you know I can't task-switch like that, so it must be bad for you. Or maybe
they just function better that way. I don't have an answer for that but I do
think it's something worth considering.
And just yesterday, I went to my
eldest's program, sort of a project day,
and something that struck me, which I thought was very need-to-share,
was the teacher put up a QR code for people to look at the video,
and what I found was quite charming was
half of the parents or more didn't know what that was or were unable to
download the QR code and the kids just went and helped them
and supported them. I thought that was very sweet, touching.
But also something that maybe we can reflect on as what children can teach
us
about technology and what we could learn from them instead.
So I'll close with this final qoute from Alvin Toffler, the futurist.
Since we can't define the future because we don't know what it's going to look
like,
we have to learn how to unlearn.The illiterate of the 21st century
will not be those who cannot read and write,
but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Thank you.