The Distortion

I talked about creating a post on the anomalies of our educational system. This is going to the beginning of such posts. Please feel free to share your thoughts and perspectives, like and share this post to get the message out and round. Let’s get into it.

Technology is a powerful tool. It is the driving force of human life and advancements and it is what shapes our world in all ramifications and spheres of life. If the technology we have today is still virtually controlled only by government, there can be no snowball chances in hell for things like the digital monies we now hear of existing like they do at this age. As software develop and internet inclusiveness emerges more intensely, ideas such as booking and uber are bound to emerge.

Back in the 1950's, during the height of the cold wars or ideological warfare between the western bloc nations or NATO state and the Eastern bloc nations or WARSAW pact, also referred to as the ideological supremacy race between Capitalism and Communism, one of the defining aspect of virtual battle scenes was the Race to the moon.

The great leap forward to this reality left an indelible mark on modern societies and created series of advancements that made human reliance on technology inevitable and mandatory.

So the question now is; what connection, does a smartphone have with a space rocket? The day I found out, my heart stopped beating for a few couple of seconds, as I held my breath in utter disbelief and astonishment. And this is why.

In 1956, the Russians and Americans raced to place man on the moon. To be honest, at this period, the biggest technology in the world was the Aeroplane. A giant tube of aluminium mass and fiber glass, glazing through the skies from one location to the other...so one can hardly imagine the audacities of experimenting on a quest to put man on a planet, outside man's natural reaches and abilities of that time.

Massive resources and billions of dollars were expended on these projects on both sides and the race was intense and extremely focused on success or nothing.

In 1956, the defunct USSR succeeded in the race to the moon, through the now late Cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, but the Americans, in the early 1960's, placed the first man on the moon.

But the amazing thing about the whole COMPUTER technology that drove those huge rockets and took man to the moon is only as half as sophisticated as the computer currently powering your MOBILE PHONES.... Now that's absolutely bombastic. To think that fifty years ago, the mass of knowledge that could create our tiny mobile phones was worth billions of dollars.

No wonder Robert Kiyosaki, one of the greatest motivational speakers of this generation and a great author and writer said, "Nobody with a smartphone in this age and time, should have anything to do with poverty" (not exact words, and emphasis mine). How can one imagine individuals of this age of free information, knowledge and social interactions on a global stage, with the same unique access to the power that took man outside the earth crust and colonized the moon and now planet Mars, declare that he or she is broke, poor or lacking in privilege? That would be a big shame.

Presently, WhatsApp has over 1.2 billion subscribers meaning that more than 1 billion phones have the WhatsApp app. But someone will say or ask, what's the big deal, shebi WhatsApp is free?!...I laugh at such ignorance; yeah its free at the front end, but don't forget that my good friend and soon to become business partner…lol, Mark Zukerberg paid a whooping $19 billion dollars to buy WhatsApp from Jan Koum and Brian Acton in the year 2013!!!...  My people, that same person that bought a so called free app for the whole budget of Africa put together and still had change, remains the 5th richest man on earth today. Think about that! Your child could be next whizkid to develop a multimillion dollars app.

The truth is that WhatsApp generates over billions of dollars every day, as over 1.2 billion subscribers burn billions of megabytes daily as they socialize on the WhatsApp platform. A sizable chunk of that revenue goes to my friend, Mark –winks.

The equation no longer holds true – the distortion

In the early ages, as formal education develops and curriculums increased to focus on career specializations and job role demands, schools were designed to condition our minds to learn as much as we can, earn a degree, look for a good job and earn salaries. Decades in and decades out, we keep learning the same stuffs and doing the same things, while the world changes around us. Formal education is very good. One cannot wish it away or deny its importance to societal growth and developments, but to insist that it is the only way and means of making it in life is a mirage, a big lie and a global deception of magnanimous magnitude.

Let's quickly look at the pictures below and tell ourselves some hard truths.

Picture (A) is showing a group of men joining forces together to lift up into a huge truck, A 5MB, not 50MB, but a 5MB memory disc into what was termed a super computer, during the early race to the space age... Now maybe someone was thinking I was exaggerating about what I said previously, about the computing powers that took mankind to the moon in the early 1960's, but this picture appears to vindicate me. A Nokia 3310 (oh, how I miss that phone) has more than 50mb computing powers, such that its memory store up to 500 names, it can do call waiting, conference calls, send text messages and much more, I'm sure someone is shaking their heads in acceptance, yet, today, we have Smartphones with dynamic computations that would have almost burst the brains of Albert Einstein; or so is my imagination running more itself?

Picture (B), shows the magnanimous printing machine of the 19th century. What enormous engineering feat. Can you imagine the ingenuity of the men that developed this feat of technology? They must have felt like geniuses and whiz-kids. Under few hours, they can now print books and increase knowledge. We are thankful to those guys and appreciate their outstanding foundations.

But friends, imagine you are somewhere around Education Mile 1, the headquarters of Printing presses and jobs in Rivers State or Shomolu-Bariga Lagos state the headquarters of Printing presses and jobs in Nigeria and after negotiating price, the manager takes you to their back office factory and you saw this relic, what will be your reaction? I'm sure you would think you have teleported back to the era of Charles Darwin's and needed to wake up fast.

Why would that be? Well, we all see what the German technological brains and machines have developed in the 21st century. Whole factories are running automatically with less and few needs of human beings. Artificial Intelligence is coming on boards and the jobs we go to school to learn about and work in are gradually being eroded. Technology is changing very fast, but our textbooks remain largely the same; pity. Students are not being thought how to think productively to create wealth, but only what to think to obtain high grades to go work for money. Little wonders most of the Top 50 richest men in the world, are all college dropouts or even stark illiterates.

These guys didn't have the time to waste working for money, but they went ahead to create money and built systems that makes or enable their monies to work for them.

Pictures (C) &  (D) pretty much explains itself. Graham Bells was an electrical genius. He patented his invention and gave the world the first taste of long distance communications. I'm sure you know that his family still enjoys a fraction of this invention that he gave the world. But the phone in Picture (D) far outsmarts anything Mr. Bells could have thought of.

The educational system is preparing us for the joblessness, which is sure to continue [see some statistics: Nigeria’s employment crisis worsened in the first quarter of 2016, with unemployment rate rising to 12.1 per cent from 9.9 percent by September ending 2015, the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, said on Friday – May 20^th, 2016. Premium Times. NBS, has revealed that no fewer than 8,663 banks’ employees lost their jobs in the first half of 2017; that an average of 360 workers had been sacked every week from January to June 2017 –Vanguard, August 22, 2017], around the globe today. Students are not thought how to create systems that will make money for them. They are taught to be accountants, lawyers, Doctors, engineers, teachers and so on, for a monthly fee, earning 12 times in 365 days and giving 90% of their adult and productive life to build the businesses and dreams of the school dropouts and so called *never do wells... Well, you have in my previous posts, seen how business even those professions are going to be drastically affected by this technology revolution – no one is spared!

[To be continue]