The Juice Network

Guess what? Technology is useful. To those people self-proclaiming themselves as “old,” you can likely remember back the 60s and 70s when you lugged your backpacks around campus, jammed full with collection of 12-inch vinyl collection. Remember when the Beatles’ first album came out in 1963 (“Please Please Me”) with 17 minutes on Side A and 15 minutes on Side B? Our earlier generations – the children of the early 20^th century – didn’t have it quite as good: They were used to three-minute phonographs with one song per 12-inch record. Today, amazingly, teenagers walk around with wallet-sized IPods that can store up to 20,000 four-minute songs – that’s almost fourteen 24-hour days of non-stop music playage sitting in their pockets! Such a fantastic contrasting of the last three generations provides a lesson to be learned: Tomorrow’s world is not the world we live in today.

What will tomorrow’s world look like? It’s hard to tell, but we can expect technology to improve humanity’s ability to get things done in EXPONENTIAL measurements! One thing we can all agree on: The youth will evermore have the best grasp on the latest-and-greatest efficiencies of technology. Still, another thing to remember: The aged have always and will always possess thewisdom and direction that comes only through experience and trial-and-error.

There is much to be lost if generational barriers persist: the young will not learn wisdom, and the experienced will not learn how to most-efficiently put their wisdom and direction to use. Conversely, there is so much to be gained through inter-generational teamwork! For all of you ambitious youngsters: Open up your ears and run to the experienced in pursuit of wisdom and direction – your technological efficiency is nothing without these! The wisest among us should proactively seek to gain understanding from the youth regarding the possibilities of technology – trust me, you can’t even imagine what is common knowledge to the youth these days! Let the direction of activity be guided by the wisdom of the wise, and let that activity be propelled to new levels of productivity and efficiency by the technologies of the youth.

For Older Generations: “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young…” (1 Timothy 4:11)

For Younger Generations: “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” (Proverbs 15:22)

For All Generations: “The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice.” (Proverbs 12:15)