THE FUTURE AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE

The future ain't what it used to be...!

That's because the future is always a moving target. Just check all those popular predictions in 1900 about what the new century would be like. 80% wrong. Like the now-forgotten director of the US Patent Office who in 1900 predicted they might just as well close up shop, because all the world's great ideas had now been invented.

There is, though, one prediction about the future which is always verifiably true. Today's children help shape tomorrow's future. So is it any wonder educators fret over reports like this: "26% of young Americans don't know that we won our Independence from Great Britain. Answers range from France to China to Mexico."

The fret and the fright isn't over the test answers. Rather, over the new generation's capacity to answer the questions that will really count. How to listen? How to learn? How to relate? How to create? How to invest? How to slice through the razzle-dazzle to elect the real-thing?

Astonishing information tools lie there at our feet in a thousand thousands ways. Books, journals, Internet, Google, schools, universities, think tanks, family and informed peers. By some studies, today's youth are not only better informed, but better thinking than most. As a corollary, another study showed that whereas in 1950 only 12% of teens thought they were important, today that number is closer to 60%

Enter the world of those wise-faced folks who like to parade the title prognosticator, futurist, or (if you like them cheaper by the dozen) cable-news analyst. How do they reconcile a generation more informed and at the same time more confident than any before them. Good...? Mis-guided?...? Arrogant...?

The University of Michigan recently added their own study to the mix, reporting that "empathy among today's college students is about 40% lower than it was in 1950. Perhaps " the de-personalization that comes from connecting on-line, and from playing ruthlessly competitive video games."

As usual, rolling the dice in the casino of life is never a sure thing. (My Uncle Vinny tried, and tans today in Boca Roton still counting all the pots he almost won!) However, a bigger example comes to mind. In the late 1930s, America's teens were a goofy, self-indulgent lot in saddle shoes, butch haircuts, old jalopies, and Andy Hardy silliness. Then suddenly came Hitler and the madness of a global war that would consume 60 millions live.

Nobody predicted it, and yet these same goofy kids faced down both the Depression and Hitler enough to earn the felicitous label "Greatest Generation." And, surprising almost everyone, earn it they did! I know, because I was there proudly watching...