AI, Blockchain, Digital Cash & Parenting Today

We live at a time when technology is advancing at exponential rate, creating many possibilities that we've seen only in science fiction a couple of decades ago. Some materials refer the sum of these advancement as the The Fourth Industrial Revolution.

All previous industrial revolutions, much like the one we are at the brink of, were intended to automate a portion of, a majority of, or entire tasks previously being done by humans. All of which so far created social progress in terms of economics, literacy, health, and to some extent equality in such a way where people were given a choice to explore new industries regardless of their family's social status.

This statement quoted from The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond summarizes the last three industrial revolutions and offers a view of how the impending one is creating a synthesis between the physical and digital domains.

_{"The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production. Now a Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third, the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres."}

The blurring of the lines between physical and digital's been happening in the creation of the Global Village a concept around media popularized Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s. Reading his works was a big part of my first year at the university studying mass communication. Now that I think about it, he predicted the technological advancement in global communication through a media that was created 30 years after his books The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man and Understanding Media were published; the internet.

The internet is still at the core of the many advancement we are experiencing today. From analytics possibility of big data, to machine learning, and other technology powering the smart implementation of artificial intelligence; to financial abstraction created by digital spending; to the transition to Internet of Money from Internet of Things and many other use cases powered by blockchain. While all these are exciting thoughts of advancement, it creates concerns around regulations, preparations through education, and job security. For ordinary people like myself and @dandalion, the biggest concern is around how to adopt as parents, and continue preparing our children for a future we are clueless how will look like.

Digital Spending & Financial Abstraction

I a study from Statista highlights year on year increase in digital payments in the Philippines.

_{Image Source ~ statista.com}

• _{Total Transaction Value in the "Digital Payments" segment amounts to US$5,612m in 2018.}
• _{Total Transaction Value is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2018-2022) of 15.8% resulting in the total amount of US$10,088m in 2022.}
• _{The market's largest segment is the segment Digital Commerce with a total transaction value of US$5,583m in 2018.}
• _{From a global comparison perspective it is shown that the highest cumulated transaction value is reached in China (US$1,040,120m in 2018).}

Keeping in mind that the Philippines is most probably the least adaptive to digital payments amongst Asian countries, the growth rate of digital payment is still quite high. The children of today equates spending to a swipe of a plastic card through a terminal, or a push of a few buttons from a mobile phone; all digital, data packets, 1s and 0s - ABSTRACT. This poses a challenge in educating children about managing money, the consequences of incorrect management of money, and the things that needs to happen in the background behind the ease of a swipe or click when spending.

This is one of the biggest reasons why we still carry cash and transact using paper money when the kids are present. While it is now an option to the kids to pay digitally for their school fees, transport services, and even snacks and meal at school, we keep to the traditional paper money to give them the "feel" of responsibility in spending. However, we might be the last generation of parents who will be able to do this. We need to be thinking about how to make money and the management of it as real as it was when we were children in this new digital age. The children of the future would otherwise have to deal with debts, and serious consequences of incorrect spending pattern.

How Do We Prepare Our Children for an Unknown Future?

We teach our children how to walk, speak, read, count, write, and all the other primary skill needed to survive in their early years. Then, we send them to institutions to learn further and prepare them for a better future, and it's all been working out fine. This age is different specially in a third-world country like ours.

Are our institutions ready to adapt to this new era, or our children will be lagging behind more significantly than they are now?

How much and which of the current workforce are likely to be replaced by machines, smart use of artificial intelligence, and robots?

What can we do as middle-class type parents to aide our children in their journey to the unknown?

Am I just being overly concerned with no basis?

These are some the questions @dandalion and I are asking ourselves. You are most likely doing the same if you are a parent exposed to the blockchain technology, artificial intelligence, and digital spending; and are concerned for the future of your children. The industries we grew up in are threatened to be taken over by machines and artificial intelligence. Farming in the other parts of the world are already being done with minimal man power. The headline today says AI threatens 16% of BPO workers in PHL —Accenture.

Lucy wants to take up accountancy, but accountants are at the top of the list of those who are at risk of losing their jobs to automation. Sam wants to be a doctor, but some advanced AI have started diagnosing real patients and illnesses. Any jobs that involves manual validation or verification will likely be taken out by solutions via a blockchain.

How are we suppose to guide our children in choosing their career path now?

After giving these things much thought, I came to a very stupid sounding answer, we don't. We will continue raising our children as humans, teaching them those that will separate them from the machines.

• Developing their skills in building, maintaining, and managing relationships.
• Helping hone as much skill-sets as we can.
• Allowing them to think freely and radically.
• Guiding them away from repetitive (frequent high volume tasks).
• Telling them that machines are tools, and them ready and conditioned that in the end, humans have to continue to lead.

I don't think technology that will be able to match that list will exist in the next fifty years. Then it'll be our children's turn to figure out how to raise their own children in a world advancing far more rapidly than the one we live today. It'll be a continuous process from here on though, and the moment we stop adapting as parents, is the time we give our world away to the machines.

Credits

Children w/ Laptops Cover Photo Background - Pixabay
Car Assembly Line - Flickr
Cyborg Woman - Pixabay
Credit Card Payment - Pixabay
Primary School Classroom in Laos - Pixabay
Simpsons You're Fired GIF - Giphy
Robot Drawing on a Notebook - Pixabay

Sources

The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond
Global Village - WikiPedia
Philippines Digital Payments Statistics - Statista