A revolution in progress

We the older generations are watching, some participating, in a revolution in our country. It is also a revolution in developed nations worldwide. That is the evolution of communication, intelligence, and access to data, whatever one chooses to call it. For most of us older normal people it is just easier to ignore the whole idea.

For the middle-aged productive class of people though the technical revolution is very real as more and more jobs depend on some proficiency in it. For our youth, it is the future and they seem to eagerly embrace the challenge.

So your kid, grandkid, great grandkid, comes home from school and immediately wants to plug into his computer. Social media contacts and news are mostly good things but one has to learn about scam artists and you don’t want the young’uns into the porn that is all too available. Actually, they are learning to handle the tech tools brought to us by the computer revolution and that will be their future—theirs not necessarily ours.

Our major competitor in the world today is China and they are doing the tech revolution well. Of course, a large part of their thinking comes from information that they steal from us and others. We can hopefully put a check on their stealing or at least slow it down by placing tighter controls on the information that we exchange in the pursuit of answers now that we are aware of what they are stealing.

Our military is learning the lessons of security of information. Think of the recent Chinese spy balloon that floated across our country looking at our nuclear missile and other types of armament locations. Currently, there is presently an exercise going on that involves using other friendly countries’ targeting sensors to talk to our own artillery installations. Sharing and protecting information to better use our own weapons. Those young men and women developing those means of exchanging information didn’t necessarily learn how to do those things after they came into the service. Most likely they learned how to work with such information in their public schools and at home talking to peers, gaming, and working their cell phones and computers every chance that they could.

A bit of personal experience here. As most of you readers know I teach people to fly. At present the most difficult part of the aviation world for this old instructor is keeping up with the increasing sophistication of the flight instruments in the airplane. Electronics, GPS, motion sensors and more have taken over. The information gets displayed on a large computer screen that the pilot has to learn, the instructor teaches, how to know what the aircraft is doing at that instant and how to make it do what it should the next moment. A few of today’s modern aircraft even monitor the pilot doing the flying and if he/she gets out of bounds, or incapacitated, the system will automatically take over, find a suitable landing place and accurately put that airplane on the runway braking to a stop. It also broadcasts to air traffic control and other aircraft along the way to the safe landing. No, I haven’t flown one of those yet but look forward to a demonstration and hopefully not a need.

Now think of the persons who developed that software to better operate something so sophisticated as an airplane, a drone or a guided missile. Where did they learn it? It wasn’t out on a football or some other athletic field. Most likely it wasn’t in one of our current teacher’s union-controlled public schools. No, it was most likely at home at night working with or challenging friends from their bedroom somewhere.

Still, our youth of today need to be brought up with a mix of activities. Athletics are important to develop healthy bodies. Good schools develop good minds and understand the advantages of good citizenship. They need both and the best way to get it is in a two-person, father and mother, loving family. It would be good if our schools could be brought up to speed to teach the needed present and future tech expertise but I suspect that it will have to be tech schools and Junior Colleges. At present too many of our four-year colleges have gone too far to the left progressive woke to teach anything practical.

Taking a short break from writing this column I just drove past McCook’s swimming pool. I see no progress on building new. Driving on west out past the proposed new ball complex I see only standing green wheat all nicely headed out. No progress on building new. During WWII they built the Air Base north of town in I think nine months. Come on! We can do better.

Good news and that is taking a ride up West 1st Street. Volunteers are painting a huge mural on the street side of what I knew as the Brown McDonald building. Lots of paint and lots of effort and the result will be something to be proud of.

That is the way that I saw it.

Dick Trail