Project Vision 21

Francisco Miraval

I recently visited one of those “locally owned and operated” shops, far removed from any franchise or national chain, where you can but both a coffee and a used book. Next to the register, glued to a jar, there was a small sign: “The only constant is change.”

That idea, of course, it is one of the foundational ideas of Western civilization, as it is clear in analyzing the place the debate about change occupied in the initial debates of philosophical issues, more than two and a half millennia ago in Greece.

At the same time, constant change is something we face and see every day. If fact, sometimes change is so deep, so sudden, and so unexpected we do not know what to do or how to react. In saying that, I am probably revealing I do not belong to the younger generation.

It is clear I am not a teenager because, according to Los adolescentes del siglo XXI (Teenagers in the 21st Century), by Argentinean researcher Roxana Morduchowicz , teenagers are able to respond in a short time to profound changes in technology and the media.

For example, only five years ago, few teenagers had a profile in a social networking site or used smartphones. Today, however, almost all teenagers are active in social networking sites and use smartphones. In fact, they combine both technologies into one constant activity.

“Teenagers live in a world very different not only from the world of adults, but from the world of teenagers five years ago,” said Morduchowicz during a recent interview for a well-known newspaper in Buenos Aires.

Those changes, I add, go beyond “friend” no longer meaning “a person you can always trust” to mean now “a name in your list of contacts.” And those changes go beyond teenagers not knowing what to do if their phone battery is dead or if they cannot get a signal.

“There has been a change in the way teens get information and in the way they learn, discover, and know (things). There has been a change in the concepts of time and space”, said Morduchowicz, adding that perhaps it is still too soon to decide whether those change are positive.

According to Morduchowicz, changes are happening so fast that in five years there probably would be a history book talking about today’s teenagers. “Book” is the key word, because in the future, “books” will be very different from the traditional kind of publication older generations still have in mind.

Morduchowicz believes books will soon be replaced by screens and those screens will be used almost everywhere and will promote brotherhood and unity among people. In fact, she said those screens may help to eliminate the current socioeconomic gap in many countries.

There is an Orwellian element in Morduchowicz’s prediction. In the meantime, while I wait for that day, I still read every time I can those used books made of paper that I can buy at one of those picturesque local coffee shops.