I have learned that having a marketable skill is the key ingredient in gaining and expressing power. An artist can express, but what good is all the beautiful expression if, at the end of the day, there’s nothing to eat or drink? It takes a skill that can overcome language barriers. It takes a skill that can overcome ethnic barriers. It takes a skill that can be applied in any context or setting.
Learning to control technology is that skill. It may sound stupid, but the age of capitalism may be over. We have entered the age of information. Most information is stored through some technical means or another. Don’t believe me? Grades, the most elemental form of valuation, have been replaced by standardized tests that have at their heart artificial intelligence engines that learn the skill level of the test-taker and adjust the next question accordingly. For example, if a test-taker answers a question correctly, then the computer searches its database and returns a harder question. If the test-taker doesn’t answer correctly, the next question is easier, and so on.
Most businesses have some type of computer application that controls their functions and processes. Most banks have electronic banking applications for customers to do most of their transactions via the internet. Bank tellers have been replaced by a mouse and keyboard.
Traffic lights, the most basic form of signal systems are all controlled via a computer locked away in a closet somewhere far away from the street light itself. Technology has come to dominate our day-to-day lives.
Teaching technology skills is the key to gaining and expressing power for those who see life a one big limiting factor. I’m always hearing about how finding a market is key to selling an idea, well…
The market for this idea of mine is people who know something and who can eloquently and confidently talk and demonstrate what they know, but have never been asked. The market is people whose perception of themselves has been devalued within themselves because of distorted messages hey receive from the world around them. The market is people who memory is nothing more than pain and whose future is more pain.
I have a market of overwhelming proportions.
Technology, as I see it, can level an uneven playing field. It takes a critical approach, though. Then again, it takes a critical approach to learn that power has ways and techniques, just like boxing or playing basketball. Everyone has power, but there are just too many people who don’t understand that they may be stuck in a whirlpool of forces that they never learned to understand.
I learned all about those forces and I know:
Controlling technology is the key to expressing power.
