Continuing on in my curmudgeonly way…

I try to observe people when I’m out and about.

My perception is that there is a non-trivial portion of our population that are still afraid to try our new-fangled gadgets.

I watch at the grocery story, those who select the self-checkout and those who don’t. While often those with really full baskets will pick the full service lines, there are plenty of people with tiny baskets who do likewise.

Now, I realize that some people expect that having someone else pack your bags is normal. But that brings me back to my Japan experience, where I always had to pack my own bags in grocery stores.

Watching people struggle with the self-checkout touch screens reminds me that skills are taught at a young age and unless we make it a point in our adult years to keep learning we will, simply, go the easy route and not challenge ourselves to learn new things.

But we have to learn new things.

Adaptability is a tricky thing, and as I get older I realize that I am not being as pliable as I once was. It takes me longer to learn things. I move less. I meet fewer people. And so on.

Our politicians make much noise about the future, STEM, and the like. Yet I wonder if we’re not already changing faster than we can really handle. That’s why we see the virulent atavism today - a blowback to the ever pressing change.

I wonder if our society ought to introduce a kind of adult training program, say a 12 month program, for anyone who has been out of school for more than 2 decades. Sort of like an expected mid-life return to community college. The idea would be to be trained in something totally new, exposed to concepts and tools that are emerging. Consider it a “13th grade”. I.e., 12th grade is for 18 y.o. folk, 13th grade is for 45 y.o. We need to be able to retool our society continually.