In this article, Air Car discusses the troublesome educational trend away from technology careers and presents the pros and cons for sending your kids onto careers in either the sciences or business fields.

When I was in University in Canada 20 years ago, Business students and MBAs were the folks who weren't smart enough to get into science and engineering programs - and the accounting students were the “geeks” of the day. Twenty years later, every kid in my daughter's University class is eager to get a piece of the high living that business students divy up amoungst themselves in their careers.

In 2007, the business and marketing grads enjoy more affluence in our society, make more money, achieve higher rank in corporate careers and have a much easier time doing it than their technology counterparts. And like the lagabouts who heckled their hard working peers back in highschool, the smart-kids of our time are being dubbed "Geeks", "Nerds", and similar derogatory labels by peers of lesser ability.

I think that what business and society are forgetting is that today’s “smart-people” are saddled with incredible challenges. On the one hand, tackling mankind's maturing Digital Age is an enormous undertaking. In fields of applied science, the low hanging fruit is eaten and the really interesting discoveries take many years to discover.

To give you some idea of what I mean by "maturing Digital Age", compare a digital technology  - computers for example - to the telephone. The telephone has been around for 110 years, it’s reasonably mature and most implementation complexities are understood and working solutions exist.

Computers have been around in the mainstream for just 30 years - which puts them in line with the telephone operators of the 1920s and 30s who used manual switches similar to the one above to pull and push wires into circuit boards by hand to connect calls.

Digital technologies are also an order of magnitude more complex than telephones were - as multimedia, business, art, science, and vast knowledge bases all fall into the scope of digital technology and computing.

In both the Digital Age and Scientific fields, the physical toll and psychological stress required to keep one's attention fixed on a difficult task for months and sometimes years is very hard on the body, family and financial well-being. A few of these smart folks will become wildly rich in this new digital age (Bill Gates and Google leads: Larry Page and Sergey Brin are three examples), but the overwhelming majority will toil in anonymity and in some cases - squalor. Most of todays technology leaders will receive very little or no social accolades for their efforts and contributions – and will more often be simply marginalized and branded as "geeks" for their trouble.

So - if sending kids to technology "camp" in this era is a difficult recommendation to make, let us consider the implications of sending them to business "camp":

1. Here they will learn how to “buy low and sell beer” - and to build as little as possible, or to ideally build nothing at all;  and to add no value other than to take money for someone else's labour and innovation.

2. Or perhaps we could reduce interest rates in competitive housing markets until new home buyers are forced to live mortage-endentured their entire adult lifetime in order to compete with hordes of credit wielding parents also just trying to give their kids a safe roof over their heads. That will make you rich won't it.

3. Then of course, there is the added benefit that they’ll have no trouble ignoring society’s acceptance for the financing of trillion dollar wars, short sighted space explorations, and will readily accept the ever broadening array of distractions that would keep mankind driving “hemis” into the 22^nd century.

Now aren't we clever? 

In the end, I see that directing young people toward a career in Business is a path of least resistance - and that this hard reality will likely continue for the next 20 years. Intellectually, and as a parent with an emotional investment in the next generation, I think that my kids will be richer and will live with exponentially less stress in their lives if they choose a career in business today - but morally, in good conscience, I have a heck of a time with accepting this conclusion.

All is not doom and gloom for the steadfast digital technologist of course. Digital technologies are improving dramatically - albeit slowly. Our online Air Car Magazine is an example of a software solution developed by literally hundreds and maybe thousands of smart people working for years in voluntary (yes - without compensation) collaboration – taking time away from family and parties to build mankind a digital age.

The same can be said for many leading scientists who must retain jobs utilizing 5% of their skills to put bread on the table while they conduct their work - financed from their own pocket in many cases. There can be no more fitful word for the treatment of these folks by our society than "shameful"; and my first choice was "idiotic".

Within the next 20 years society will see truly amazing benefits come from the investment that today's "smart-kids" are making. I just wish I could honestly say that the society they build it for, you and I, are deserving of their sacrifices.

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