Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever?

1. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • Skill transfer from generation to generation is one of the keys to human survival. • Humans are uniquely co-dependent. • This is not a new problem.

2. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • Does ‘more pie for me mean less for you’? • Not if you believe in synergy! • The late Jane Jacobs, noted urbanist said that all human progress comes from the development of villages towns and cities. • First villages formed for mutual protection. • But proximity brought the opportunity for skill sharing, specialization and trading.

3. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • The land of Ugh, Nnn and Zll. • Ugh meets Nnn and for some reason, they don’t kill each other. • Instead, they decide to co-locate their families for mutual protection against animal predators and human attackers.

4. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • By co-locating, they begin to exchange learn about each other. • It turns out Ugh is a better hunter and Nnn is a better flint knife carver (used for making fire and butchering animals and in defending the primitive village). • Ugh decides to spend all his time hunting antelopes and Nnn decides to spend his time making flint knives– not only more flint knives but better ones!

5. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • Note information has flowed from Ugh to Nnn and in the reverse direction– this is an information economy, circa 10,000 B.C.E.! • Now the local economy is producing more antelopes and more (and better) flint knives– higher GDP and higher quality levels.

6. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • There has been a huge improvement in the well being of these people. • The local economy is producing a surplus and they decide to trade with Zll, whose family are skilled in textiles (sewing animal skins for protection from the weather). • A regional trading economy is forming. • All made possible from proximity (in a village), skill sharing, knowledge transfer and specialization.

7. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • In pre-history, skill transfer was achieved by cave paintings, storytelling and children working with their parents • Boys learned to hunt from their fathers and girls learned everything else. • In the renaissance, this became more formalized– guilds were formed and a system of apprenticeships was put in place that survives in Europe to this day.

8. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • Stone cutters, glass makers, shoe makers, barbers, doctors, architects, engineers, actors, blacksmiths, musicians, builders, iron workers, etc. • Apprentice, craftsman, master craftsman. • Superseded by unions and associations– e.g., American Association of Architects, Canadian Medical Association, Teamsters, Screen Guild, United Auto Workers, etc.

9. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • Concept was to provide high quality of worker and workmanship. • Protect workers and promote their interests. • Raise labor rates. • Later on became more inclined to protect vested interests.

10. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • Even with an apprenticeship system, still need lifelong learning! • I went back to school at age 53! • Took six courses with OREA College to become licensed Commercial Realtor. • The day you think you know everything, is the day you become old. • There are old, 30 year olds– be open to new knowledge, learn new skills, stay young, practice lifetime fitness too!

11. Execution Counts, Ideas are Not Enough • Where have all the Heroes gone? • 1914–1994: the greatest Generation ever? • What did they overcome?

12. Execution Counts, Ideas are Not Enough • Two World Wars (more than 3,500 Canadians died in just 10 days of fighting at Vimy Ridge). • The Flu Pandemic (more than 30,000,000 people worldwide died). • The Great Depression. • The Cold War.

13. Execution Counts, Ideas are Not Enough • What did they do? • Internal Combustion Engine. • The Rocket. • The Integrated Circuit. • The Computer. • The Internet. • And much more.

14. Execution Counts, Ideas are Not Enough • How did they do it? • Focus and Discipline • Confidence and Imagination • Ability to Execute • Bravery and Sacrifice

15. Execution Counts, Ideas are Not Enough • What’s missing today? • The next generation of great entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, etc. • Why? • Lack of focus, discipline, sacrifice and CONFIDENCE!

16. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • What’s to be done? • Our High School system sucks! • Canterbury High School for the Arts– four of my five kids went there. • No vandalism/kids with enthusiasm for what they are learning! • Kids do all their normal courses and then spend hours on their specialization– drama, music, visual arts, dance, writing.

17. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • Why not a School for the Technological Arts? • Stop treating 15 to 18 years olds like they are babies. • Inspire them/work them… hard. • And bring back phys ed! • Work the mind and body! • Sports teaches– team work, stamina, perseverance in the face of obstacles, persistence, the joy of winning, coping with loss

18. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • Learn from the Aussies– schools specialize in sports too. • Australia punches way above its weight in the Summer Olympics. • Don’t drink and think!

19. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • My friend Len Fraser may retire at the end of this year. • He knows more about building houses than just about anyone. • More than 25 trades needed to complete a house! • Mind bogglingly complex. • When Len retires all this knowledge will disappear– designs, trades, scheduling, etc.

20. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • Rats! • I suggest Len bring in an Apprentice. • “But he would have to produce!” • Skepticism about this generation’s stick-to-it'ness.

21. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • All Len’s trade secrets will be gone. • Does it matter? • Is anyone willing to listen to elders today anyway? • Youth culture is idolized in N.A. • Hey, if you aren’t on Facebook, you don’t matter!

22. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • I believe in unconventional mentoring for next generation entrepreneurs. • Not MBAs, Accountants, Lawyers, Bankers. • Mentoring by people who have worked in the trenches, who know what it means to make payroll and how to sell products, services or ideas and who know how to lead. • The right mentor can greatly increase the chances of survival for a new business or help you get promoted in your JOB.

23. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • Data storage is another huge problem. • The late 20th Century and the 21st Century will be known as the ‘silent era’ because none of our digital media will last very long. • Scientific American said a few years ago: digitized material will last "forever, or for five years, whichever comes first."

24. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • There is also the problem of legacy systems: imagine if you stored all your data on 8 track cassettes? • Classic films that are less than 40 years old suffer significant degradation in terms of their sound, colour and visual acuity. • Your web server fries, your hard drive dies, your CD ROMS and DVDs degrade, your web hosting service goes bankrupt.

25. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • We can not even solve an intractable problem like how to communicate with future generations over a geologically brief period of time like 10,000 years. • All human languages evolve far too quickly to reliably communicate over periods that are far shorter than this. • Try reading Shakespeare!

26. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • How to warn future generations that ‘here lies buried radioactive waste, dangerous for more than 100,000 years’? • Can not be done! • Records on acid-free paper stored in a dry place can survive for several thousand years. • Paper (!) with machine readable holes in it and fed through an optical scanner may be the only way to preserve classic films.

27. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • Humans are uniquely vulnerable: the information we need for survival is extensive. • Takes more than 22 years for a human body and brain to fully mature. • Need accurate transfer of information from generation to generation without which, humans will suffer greatly and needlessly.

28. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • Maybe we should be digging up historical artifacts, photographing them and recording salient features and then putting them back in the ground from which they came instead of in museums, no matter how carefully stored. • Earthquakes, fires, a breakdown in civilization, an airplane or truck crash carrying valuable artifacts can scatter or destroy the historical record for all time.

29. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • Humans need to work in teams and share skills and specialize to arrive at a state of the greatest good for the greatest number. • Stable information storage will ensure that we are not inevitably condemned to repeat history's mistakes.

30. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • Want to live forever? • Build a Personal Website (PWS) and KEEP A PAPER BACKUP COPY OF THE SITE! • Why do we need personal web sites? • Because, as intellectuals, we have a valuable and perishable resource: our minds and our individual knowledge and experience.

31. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • Host our personal intellectual property (IP) on our PWSs. • Develop it in a rigorous manner over our entire careers. • We now have a way of preserving and sharing our expertise with others that has never been available to any generation that has gone before.

32. Lost Knowledge– Are We Losing the Skills of the Greatest Generation Ever? • Your PWS is your opportunity to contribute to and be a part of this new world-wide 'hive' mind. • If your personal IP is important enough, your PWS will make money for you 'while you are lying on a beach‘. • That is it will create value separate from hourly effort and independent of its creator and it will outlive you too.