Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2026 11:28 pm

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2026 12:23 pm What is your view regarding the end of industrial civilization and the fact that an information age has not happened?

I'll speak for myself but I interpret Burja to be saying essentially the same thing - that industrial civilization is reliant on a set of social technologies and, as those technologies degrade, industrial civilization degrades.

I'll use references to previous posts to illustrate this using the example of one social technology that industrial civilization is reliant on - the public education system in the United States. A previous post made reference to the printing press which came on the scene in 1455 before the advent of the industrial revolution. In less than 500 years, the printing press and other things, but the printing press being key, eventually enabled the mass production of school textbooks that were low cost, standardized and uniform. These textbooks appeared in nearly every or essentially every public school classroom in the United States.

A previous post referenced the 66 years from Kitty Hawk to the Boeing 747, the years from 1903 to 1969. What public schools accomplished during those years was a high school graduate was ready to hit the factory floor. Practically any male high school graduate could go to the employment office at the front gates of a factory, be employed that day, and work on that same factory floor until retirement, supporting a wife and children. Some could go onto college and do the same. No BS, no list of job requirements, no online application, no ridiculous multi-week interview process, just a diploma and a willingness to show up and be trained, which was enough to be factory floor ready.

That system (the US public school system as it existed from approximately the years 1900 to 1970) is part of what designed and built the Boeing 747 right here in America without any reliance on any other education system. No H1-Bs needed. It was a social technology tailored specifically to the industrial revolution. It developed over centuries.

As the US public school system degraded little by little starting circa 1971 or so, as the US entered the maintenance phase of a declining civilization, that didn't suddenly mean that the degradation of the public school system automatically began to tailor it for the new incoming information age. What it meant was the degradation of the public school system degraded the functioning of the industrial production system, slowly but surely, and that's it, period. The public school system, after all, wasn't designed over centuries, seamlessly interlocking with other social technologies to produce factory floor human robots willing to work 45 years until retirement only to be presented with a company watch or some such thing, science lesson by science lesson, math lesson by math lesson, reading lesson by reading lesson, ass paddling by ass paddling as needed, to just degrade little by little and therefore be just perfect for the new incoming information age paradigm. That's not how systems work.

As the public school system degrades, the industrial production process will degrade. People will home school. People will send their kids to a variety of private schools that prepare kids for a variety of things. People will pull their kids out of schools and do nothing. Public schools will shut down in some areas. Where public schools shut down in some areas, maybe some of those people will move so they can continue to send their kids to public school and maybe some won't. But none of that is suddenly going to produce information-age-ready 18 year olds. The industrial production system is going to continue to degrade, collapse, hit bottom, not entirely going away, and then something, some spark, some series of sparks over decades and centuries will create a new set of social technologies specifically tailored for the new information age or whatever it is that is going to come.

Innovation
Education
The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents
By Sasha Rogelberg
Reporter

July 12, 2026, 7:56 AM ET

In 2002, Maine introduced a program to allow students widespread access to technology in school.

In 2002, Maine became the first state to implement a statewide laptop program to some grade levels. Then-governor Angus King saw the program as a way to put the internet at the fingertips of more children, who would be able to immerse themselves in information.

By that fall, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative had distributed 17,000 Apple laptops to seventh graders across 243 middle schools. By 2016, those numbers had multiplied to 66,000 laptops and tablets distributed to Maine students.

King’s initial efforts have been mirrored across the country. In 2024, the U.S. spent more than $30 billion putting laptops and tablets in schools. But more than a quarter-century and numerous evolving models of technology later, psychologists and learning experts see a different outcome than the one King intended. Rather than empowering the generation with access to more knowledge, the technology had the opposite effect.

Earlier this year, in written testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath said Gen Z is less cognitively capable than previous generations, despite its unprecedented access to technology. He said Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized tests than the previous one.

While skills measured by these tests, like literacy and numeracy, aren’t always indicative of intelligence, they are a reflection of cognitive capability, which Horvath said has been on the decline over the last decade or so.

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Oct 15, 2026 2:38 pm

By that fall, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative had distributed 17,000 Apple laptops to seventh graders across 243 middle schools. By 2016, those numbers had multiplied to 66,000 laptops and tablets distributed to Maine students.

https://fortune.com/article/how-did-us- ... n-parents/

The printing press and textbooks were great technologies that worked for the industrial revolution. They were also low cost. Maybe a few private schools will pop up that continue to use them while shunning computers but that won't be enough to turn the tide.

Amazon, Microsoft and T-Mobile among top donors to Trump’s ballroom
Oct. 15, 2026 at 11:48 am
By Alexis Weisend
Seattle Times business reporter

Three Seattle-area corporate giants, Microsoft, Amazon and T-Mobile, collectively donated $20 million to fund President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project, according to an internal spreadsheet obtained by The Washington Post.

The donations put them among the project’s top donors.

Although the White House shared the names of some donors last year, the list of 57 donations over $100,000 details just how much money donors were willing to hand out.

Tech titans Apple and Nvidia each donated an eye-popping $25 million. But Redmond-based Microsoft’s $10 million was also one of the project’s top 10 publicly named donors. Seattle-based Amazon and Bellevue-based T-Mobile each donated $5 million.

The donations have been criticized as an attempt to curry favor with the president. The Washington Post report alleges that some donors, which include individuals, have benefitted from favorable regulatory decisions, government contracts and — in one case — a pardon for a family member.

Microsoft and Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A T-Mobile spokesperson declined to comment.

Previously, the companies would not specify how much money they had donated.