And yeap, also part of the epic conversation in the last 2 posts, Joshua shared with me how Singapore’s education system had now drastically changed as opposed to the more robotic one that we went through.

He said, in today’s education system, it is now less rigid and more invested into individual capabilities and progress. A primary school student could be studying A.Maths and a secondary student could actually choose what they want to study.

Adding to that, this current generation of students are not simply growing up with the internet; they arent simply the internet age – they are the generations where grew up on google, facebook, youtube, wordpress – all of them already matured and powerful.

Those that are currently in poly, uni and just grads are the internet age kids, yes – but they grew up on developing internet apps and technology. Just like there was friendster when I was in sec sch. But how much can friendster do?
Similarly, the facebook they encountered are less smart and more rudimentary.

But kids that are in secondary school now grew up in the world of information warfare, propaganda warfare, advanced social media networks, powerful and intelligent search engines and not to mention: the huge trove of knowledge and wisdom that had been aggregating and stashing since the early days of internet.

Just to prove this point, I am actually currently listening to a 2006 podcast by Alexandre Joyce when he was still doing his Masters and as a researcher of Formlab at the University of Montreal. He was talking things that are still relevant to today’s age: Design and Complexity, with his research topic – Crowdsourcing in Design.

2006 is whopping 8 years ago, and I am only now discovering his work. Imagine what the kids of today have assess to? I do not even. Know where to find the correct resources for my projects during my days in the secondary school and polytechnic.

Thus, Joshua and I concluded that, in depth self education and self funde research into worthwhile and deeper topics are not just relevant and extremely vital in keeping ourselves above the tide when the avalanche of these brilliant youngsters come into society and blow everyone out of water. Everyone will be cast irrelevant, much like how Mark Zuckerberg had brought about an intense midlife crisis upon more than half the male population in the world.

Do not doubt, if you dont start getting back into an academic frame and go beyond the stupid and obvious, you will start to find the world, a more and more difficult place to live in.