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

Re:I'd just like to point out that

[HugeMidget]

Then why is your Slashdot user number so high? Didn't the internet start around slashdot? Between reading the many moronic comments (including this one), pr0n and mp3's what else good is the internet?

I'd just like to point out that

[blair1q]

I've been on the net since before some of you were born.

--Blair

What about me ????

[xintelexx]

I was 15 only 4 years ago. I have no college degree(started towards my AS in CS this fall)but manage to make $65k a year running a furtune 500 company network. I don't think age has anything to do with it, it is the desire and dedication and love for something that drives a person. I was the same way 4 years ago, smarter then the 25 year old, but looked down upon because I was so young. I still get the same treatment sometimes, but now I get a lot of "wow" and "damn, your only 19, that is great", my current boss is pushing me hard towards college, and getting my certifications...I only hope to be a millionair by 27 not because it looks cool, but so I can help those that helped me, parents, siblings, teachers, and to buy a nice home :) We can all have our dreams can't we ? ..... on another note, my co-worker just turned the big 30, and I am scared of turning 20, I feel like I will lose my edge ..... these things we must do.