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The Rise Of The 15-Year-Olds
Lewis' latest book, Next: The Future Just Happened, is getting some enthusiastic applause from the popular media, whose binary view of the Net holds that it's either destroying the world or changing everything in it. In a similiar vein, Time asks in its cover this week "Do Kids Have Too Much Power?" The magazine, along with many so-called experts, seems to think so, and cyberspace is a big reason why. There can't be a better place on the Web to have this conversation than here.
Lewis argues that the Net has spawned a great status revolution, one that especially affects the technologically skilled young. The insiders are now out, and the outsiders in; high school sophomores and juniors are in charge and the people who have always run things are doomed and irrelevant. Lewis sees one powerful institution after another, from Wall Street to the music industry to the legal profession, being transmongrified by kids who, thanks to the Net, can do for free what many professionals have been charging tons of money for.
Kids, with sophisticated technology skills and more time on their hands than almost any other segment of the population, are fighting to get hold of traditionally proprietary (thus valuable) information. It's giving lawyers and corporations fits. Companies wonder how they can possibly survive as new media technologies -- open source among them -- make information cheaper and more available.
Is this a revolution, and is it really upon us?
To make his case, Lewis visits a series of casually-dressed, informally-educated teenagers in the U.S. and England, including the celebrated Jonathan Lebed of Cedar Grove, N.J., who rocked Wall Street and the SEC by turning himself into a master online stock manipulator in a few short months, though that's supposed to take years of high-intensity experience and training. Lewis also profiles Marcus Arnold of Perris, Calif., who joined the knowledge-sharing Web site AskMe and shortly become its most popular legal expert, dispensing wisdom he gleaned from many hours of Court TV watching, humiliating attorneys everywhere.
These kids, says Lewis, are destroying the "old priesthoods" of lawyers, investment gurus, academics and CEO's. Technology has "put afterburners on the egalitarian notion that anyone-can-do-anything, by enabling pretty much anyone to try anything -- especially in fields in which 'expertise' had always been a dubious proposition. Amateur book critics published their reviews on Amazon; amateur filmmakers posted their works directly onto the Internet; amateur journalists scooped the world's most powerful newspaper."
In my opinion, Lewis stumbles badly here. It's true that amateurs have gained access to fields once closed. But how many best-selling books are propelled by Amazon reviews? And who did Jonathan Lebed's parents call when he got into trouble -- Marcus Arnold or a criminal attorney who'd passed the bar exam?
The idea that anybody can become an instant expert at any age in any context is pretty creepy. It doesn't even apply to programming or Web design, let alone law or finance. Besides, expertise isn't power. Publishing houses, bar associations and medical groups still wield enormous influence, not only over their respective fields but with with regulatory agencies and, viat hordes of lobbyists, with lawmakers. Entrenched insiders have great win-loss stats.
Lewis believes such insiders are as irrelevant as the czars. What they know isn't so important, and it's obviously been over-priced.
But like much of the media, he focuses on the exceptions more than the rule. Most 15-year-olds on the Net are not making millions or dispensing legal advice; they're gaming, coding, downloading music, talking to their friends, surfing. You will never hear most of their names on the news. It's true that younger people now have access to once-restricted enclaves like the stock market, and they are forcing institutions to change. But that isn't the same as overthrowing them.
It's the nature of media to focus on aberrations, which makes for good stories but poor social reality. When a plane crashes, the wreckage is on TV screens 'round the clock for days. But planes rarely crash.
Could be because:
Men now want to ditch their Tshirts and put their most professional image forward.
Power has swung back to the old east-coasters who don't believe a man is properly motivated without a rope around his neck.
Either way, them "15 year olds" who can still wear tees and Nikes to work, enjoy.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When I was in my second last year of high school, I wrote a program that 'mimicked' the Netware logon screen exactly, and when someone tried to log in, it would look like they somehow tripped a batch file, and a format c: was in the works...
On April 01, I set up the program on one of the computers in the a lab near my first class, just before classes started for the day at 9 AM. Shortly after that, at about 9:20, I could hear the SysAdmin just HOLLERING in the hallway by the lab. I was just waiting for him to enter my class and look with evilness at me.
But it never happenned. I think that that was the best one I ever came up with.
And yes, I've matured now. I don't do that anymore. Except maybe to my family members :P
Is Katz a sensationalist or just another troll? He kinda blurs the boundries. And what's this preoccupation with children? Kinda creepy, in that Willy Wonka way.
Some of us have fallen in love with the notion of giving without reserve-Raoul Vanegiem, Revolution of Everyday Life
I can understand what you are saying, although it isn't necessarily true. I too once though I knew everything there was to know about certain aspects of computing. But when I was 16, I got hired by a small corporation. And you're right in the fact that most 15 year olds don't know how computing works in the real world, it is a lot more complex. I do feel I have gained many skills by working in a corporate environment. And (now 18), I understand that a lot more organization is needed if you are working on a large scale. So I guess I am your exception. I have seen 2 college graduates (with 4 year degrees in networking & telecommunications) come and go because they didn't have the skills needed. They had the knowledge; believe me, but not the same passion for computing, like the old school hackers and the new school hackers have. They were in it for the money. This is truly a new generation. We see where computing has been, where it's at, and where we WANT it to go. Maybe some of our goals are unrealistic, but that is what drives us.... We go for the impossible. On a side note, I have a friend that is a financial advisor (just turned 18), and even in these days of horrible stock market outlooks, he still manages to make about $4000 a week day-trading. He's been doing it since he was 15, with no internship or the like, just an understanding of how the system works, and a passion to defeat it. Peace, Pi
"the future just happened?" Shouldn't the series start tomorrow and end yesterday?
The irony extends farther than just those of us who go back as far as you mention. Katz was right, who better to discuss the self-appointed 15 year-old experts of the world, than the world headquarters for self-appointed experts?
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
Survey says!:
/.
30% Downloading pr0n before Mom gets home from the market.
30% Chatting on AIM to all the 15 year old chicks.
30% Chatting on AIM pretending to be a 15 year old chick.
9% Reading
1% Hacking/Cracking/Manipulating stock markets, and other halfway intelligent endeavors.
...that JonKatz himself proves that anybody with a few months' experience in reading technology books and surfing the Internet can become a paid, featured columnist on Slashdot every week.
If I remember my 15th year properly, it was more like
;)
89% downloading pr0n
10% searching for more pr0n
1% chat rooms (BBSs)
Course, this was with a 386 and a 2400 baud modem, so the downloading took more time because it took *forever*. Now I remember the *real* reason I got my 14.4....
Wow, your story sounds exactly the same as mine, except I discovered IRC and Slashdot.
If these 15 year-olds are so powerful, why do they have to bug me at the 7-11 to buy beer for them?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
sean is the young man who helps at the retirement center he helps me send e-mails and other things and he told me to look at this article. this man is right all these young people that think they know the world.
last week i went to the rite-aid to get my lanoxin prescription and a young man was in front of me in line he had earrings and long hair and it looked like he missed a spot when he was shaving because there was a little bit of hair under his lip. he didn't even offer to let me go ahead in line even though i had heart medication and he was just getting cigarettes. norman used to smoke but he died of respiratory failure in his car and i didn't know where he was because he would always tell me, gladys i am the man of this house and i don't need to tell you where i'm going. so i waited at home for him and he never came and he never came and finally i called the police and they found him out by the lake. he used to like feeding the birds there.
sean says i have to stop using the computer now other people want to use it please send me e-mail i don't know the address because sean gave it to me and didn't tell me what it is. good bye your friend gladys malone
He's on vacation this week and told me not to go online cause he thinks I'll get in trouble. Heck, I've been online for 2 days, and haven't gotten into trouble. In fact, Monday, I got an e-mail from a total stranger offering to help me manage my money. I e-mailed him my bank account numbers, SSN, Mom's maiden name, my PIN numbers and all my credit card numbers. Soon after I did that I got some e-mail from the credit card companies saying I was over my limit and did I want to increase it, but my new friend told me it was a glitch and to just click OK. Today, he showed me how to direct deposit my paycheck. Those numbers he gave me aren't what's on my bank statement, but he says thats fine. Tomorrow he's going to show me how to transfer my house title online. Thursday, he'll show me a non-revokable power of attorney. When my son comes back Friday, he'll see that I'm not incompetant!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.