A reason for school

Our hands were getting a little numb as we used a simple handheld hole punch on cards that looked like those you’d punch in and out at a factory. These cards contained simple commands for a massive computer the size of a large boiler assembly. It had one data input, where we fed the machine with hundreds of cards. Eventually, we got the answer and entered it into our handwritten worksheet assignment: calculate the amount of fuel needed to lift a Saturn V rocket into space.

My lab partner – who, I’m sure, now works as a modern-day rocket scientist in Korea – and I submitted our findings to the professor. It was the late 1970s and we were on the computing cutting edge with our dinosaur technology. By today’s standards, if the same technology was used to produce what we now hold in our hand to Facebook with, the computer would be the size of the Empire State Building.

Education back then was limited to what was available. Most of my classmates were in vocational school, like mechanics. In those days, the big technology was based on the size of the engine under the hood and “digital” was unheard of. Today, just to be able to work in the tech department of any company takes schooling and interest in the sciences.

I watch young children wrestle with any handheld and soon enough they are able to use it just as easily as it was for me to bat a ball. The big difference was that a bat didn’t need upgrading, only the arm muscles did. Perhaps I’m looking too far back for many as no one born in this century has witnessed such rapid change as my generation did. The old school was our backyards; today’s school is the entire universe.

So what can we do to benefit from all this technology? Go to school and learn your math and leapfrog into the quantum world. We all know that our heritage is our driving force leading us to the future, but the future is going to be completely different from when it was thought out in an agreement three decades ago. Tomorrow’s world needs people who want to live in it at par with the rest of the world, while still maintaining our heritage and culture.

In fact, we have been doing business for several centuries using our heritage, while benefitting those who retailed our products in the fur industry. Today I suppose that could shift to some high-tech land management and wildlife setup to keep our harvesting culture intact and maintain control over our territory. We need to use new technologies in wildlife and forest sciences and engineering. Of course, our own traditional knowledge will play a big part.

So get smart, go to school. Now!