Internet visionary Kevin Kelly homeschooled his 8th grade son for a year and wrote about it recently for The New York Times Magazine. He tried to teach his son the kind of tools that would help him navigate the pace of technology which is accelerating so fast “his eventual adult career does not exist yet. Of course it won’t be taught in school.”  Kelly believes we all need “technological literacy…proficiency with the larger system of our invented world. It is close to an intuitive sense of how you add up, or parse, the manufactured realm. We don’t need expertise with every invention; that is not only impossible, it’s not very useful. Rather, we need to be literate in the complexities of technology in general, as if it were a second nature.”

As usual with Kelly’s writing, he cuts through to the heart of the matter, and offers tools and a mindset for navigating the tricky terrain that affects us all:

• Every new technology will bite back. The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused. Look for its costs.

• Technologies improve so fast you should postpone getting anything you need until the last second. Get comfortable with the fact that anything you buy is already obsolete.

• Before you can master a device, program or invention, it will be superseded; you will always be a beginner. Get good at it.

• Be suspicious of any technology that requires walls. If you can fix it, modify it or hack it yourself, that is a good sign.

• The proper response to a stupid technology is to make a better one, just as the proper response to a stupid idea is not to outlaw it but to replace it with a better idea.

• Every technology is biased by its embedded defaults: what does it assume?

• Nobody has any idea of what a new invention will really be good for. The crucial question is, what happens when everyone has one?

• The older the technology, the more likely it will continue to be useful.

• Find the minimum amount of technology that will maximize your options.

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