This is the war on Science. Next comes the war on Education. The obliteration of democracy comes next. If you imagine Trump gives up this level of power without bloodshed in the streets you are deluding yourself.
And Facebook and X are not advocacy organizations vehemently pushing an agenda? The fact that there is an organization looking to speak for teenagers and their rights to privacy in the face of the aggressiveness of FAANG lobbying should be the best news you hear today. Organizations like CSM and EFF are the last points of light in an ocean of darkness.
The future iterations of this are purely terrifying. This is so elegantly demonstrated by the Oscar Nominated short film “Please Hold” from 2022. Picked up by mistake by a roving police drone, a young man is incarcerated autonomously and has no way of release outside of money or time.
The fact that Tiktok wholesale bought the user base for musical.ly, largely preteen children, and converted them to an entirely different app meant to addict them and harvest their data seems pretty unconscionable.
So as someone who teaches robotics to middle school
Students, FIRST lego is still the best program for kids. If you would like to learn CAD, EE, 3D printing, and microcontrollers, then certainly go the battle bots route. However, this will be a steep learning curve for your son and he may get frustrated. With FIRST, he will move from FLL to FRC in late middle school which has much more open road. He will also learn to work as a part of a team and solve problems in concert with peers which is different than a father son team. FLL is intense and almost a year round pursuit. Find a good home school team for him to join and he’ll get the best experience.
Chief Seattle had it right all along it seems[0]. We should have been aggressive about considering the impact of technology on the next seven generations. It’s not too late to start of course, but it is too late to avoid dire planetary changes.
It is a one-time cultural leap or socioeconomic transition that needs to happen, but at global scale and spanning fairly diverse cultures (some more ready than others).
In some sense the amount of damage that will cumulate till that transition process is complete is secondary to it actually happening (for which there is not guarantee)
In any case, given that such views are nowhere yet close to being common ground truth that is widely accepted the next decades will likely see enormous strife, debate and ideological movements (maybe even religious ones).
A defining moment in our social evolutiom that a lot of us that grew up in the age of carefree consumerist ignorance probably did not see coming.
