The Rise Of The 15-Year-Olds

Adolescents thundered onto the Net over a decade ago, and the place has never been the same, for better or worse (both, really). Are brilliant 15-year-old computer geeks running the world, upending existing institutions? Does it matter that childhood sometimes ends when computers arrive? Some have argued that geeks and nerds are committing a form of social parricide, turning on their parents and almost all other elders, as clueless, hostile and incompetent. Author Michael Lewis thinks so, and he think it's great. (First in a series.)

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.

Comments

Well rounded

[truthsearch]

The flip side to that is that many kids are becoming well rounded because of the net. Kids that are introverted and used to spending time mostly alone and indoors can now spend that time on a computer and internet. It's an outlet to interact with others (to a limited extent) while still being introverted. It's better that the shy kids are on the internet, learning to use computers, maybe learning to program, rather than doing nothing.

But what's the overall picture? I think most kids who are active and outgoing remain active and outgoing; I doubt most of them trade in sports for the internet. And I would imagine most kids who are introverted, but have a computer at home, use the computer and become more well-rounded.

And what is power?

[Badgerman]

First of all, as noted, we hear the exceptions, not the rule. Most fifteen-year-olds I run into on the net certainly aren't stupid, but I doubt they're running things. My 20 to 30 something friends do a lot on the net because we also have the money and the access to make our own servers, buy domains, etc.

Secondly, let's be honest about "kids running things" - the adults have the government, and the military, the police, and the money In short, brute and economic force. Until the kids have that, they aren't running things - and by the time they do, they'll be adults.

And, ironically, probably wonering if THEIR kids are running things.

Not Kids Only

[Ezubaric]

While it is true that children can gain access to information at an earlier age, the tilt of this story seems to ignore that anyone at any age can do the same. If we are to bemoan the fact that 15 year old punks can find out how to throw up a crappy webpage to rave about the latest NSync single, we should also remember that the same resources allow a dissident living in Nigeria to let the world know about the grave injustices being done.

The Internet is about equalizing opportunity, and if children take advantage of that, so much the better. But it also alows those outside of traditional conduits of society and education to level the playing field. A reactionary discussion of tots using the Internet to learn about finance, programming, and web design is ultimately myopic.

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