“Harvard students are looking to invent jobs instead of finding one.”
– The Social Network
When I first read some review headlines for the movie, The Social Network, I saw many references to it being a historical bookmark of the past decade.
At the time, I didn’t understand this concept, and wondered how the Facebook movie would live up to this. But after having watched the movie, it seems pretty obvious.
It spoke a great deal to what’s apparently happening in the psyche of young, intelligent American kids, and their struggle to find their own place between alternating worldviews.
The American Dilemma
One common American worldview espouses traditional workplace values, the corporate job, the construction job, common trades.
The other, more alluring path is to be apart of the new economy. Where the Internet, clean technology, and soon-to-be-innovations promise a new American golden age--where young people’s fresh ideas would take root and bring vast fortunes back to America.
This is the idea: China and India are smarter and harder working…so what? Doesn’t matter! We’ll just go open up a box of Awesome and invent cool shit and they are happy to just assemble the awesome new products that we’re licensing to them. Then we’ll take those well-made, cheap products, and sell them to ourselves, and while we’re at it, you guys can all buy one too, and we’ll all get paid.
To be honest, I love that scenario.
That’s probably not going to happen, though. We’re outmatched, outmanned, and they’re getting wise to our little plans, and going ahead and just buying America so that our awesome work will just be theirs. Ok, maybe that’s not going to happen either. I’m not a scientist.
The traditional path, the corporate job, the common trades seem to be the likely path for many young people, but they’ve lost so much of their appeal. I believe that young Americans are spoiled, overstimulated, under-focused, selfish, and shortsighted at the very core. I know that seems harsh, but it’s kinda true. There’s positive traits mixed in there, but no need to mention those now.
We don’t want the 9-5 grind because we’re too smart and talented, we can’t do a task effectively because there’s something cool on the computer to look at, and did I mention that I’m too creative to work in an office? Right. The problem is that none of that is true. Multi-tasking on a computer doesn’t mean you’re hand-eye coordination is superb, doing a job in 50% of the time doesn’t mean your boss wants you to 50% of the time “off”. Being told you’re creative doesn’t mean that you are creative, liking music doesn’t mean that you should work in music, liking video games doesn’t mean you can design them, using Facebook doesn’t put you in a position to invent the next big one.
There are so many common misconceptions in young America that don’t seem to be any closer to being resolved than they were during our childhood. The misconception that being clever, smart, better than others, are rights that one is born with. That hard work is less valuable than creativity. That being normal, being pragmatic is less valuable than following your muses. It’s sending people down a track that doesn’t seem like can hold the weight. More and more young people are going to college, yet more and more of them are majoring in things that have no career attached to them. In other words, we’re “following our dreams” and now we’re lost. Our parents have near crashed the economy completely with pure ignorance, have squandered in mindless materalism, disconnecting their own families for no real reason. We have no direction to take from them. We’re on our own out here, trying to figure this out. The ancients speak against us, the contemporaries speak against us, but we see their failures too, are not willing to repeat them. In other words, we’re choosing our own failures, and attempting to write our own successes. Preferably in a way that exceeds anyone else before us. We want to have more fun, be richer, and never get old.
And here we have Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook and subject of The Social Network), having tapped into a shining example of how to profit the new economy. It’s a perfect encapsulation of what this whole thing can be, because it’s so contradictory. The same contradiction that confuses young Americans has been turned into the business itself. The time wasted, the time expressing individuality, the time spent thinking about oneself, and one’s purpose in relation to friends and family, held together for long enough for an advertiser to sneak in an impression. There is no programming required, such as in TV and radio, it’s merely the time spent illuminated on one’s life, being reflected back at you with a subtle consumer message attached to it. It’s the message of the consumer, it’s the message of the person, give me time to exercise my ego, and I’ll let you sell me something. The person creates the world that’s important to them, and it’s viewable by others. That’s not the same as needing pipes for plumbing, or food to eat, but it’s somehow become a necessity that generates income as such.
So, what for all the others?
There’s no guarantee that there will ever be more innovations to be made, we just have faith in the idea. Much more faith than our parent’s gods could ever require. There is no guarantee that young Americans will continue inventing things that make money, to replace the failings of our parents with success. But it’s the hope that might be just enough to outdo our competitors.
