Lately, I’ve started obsessing about my lawn, insisting ’70s rock was the golden age of music, telling bad dad jokes, and talking about the good old days. I’m here to admit I’ve fully embraced my status as an old dude.Back in my day, we wanted to grow up to be astronauts, doctors, scientists or firefighters. Sure, some of us wanted to be rock stars, actors or play professional sports, but today’s kiddos have different aspirations. Some still aspire to professions that benefit our society and advance the American way of life, but over half of teenagers want to be content creators or influencers. That’s right, a Morning Consult survey found that 57% of Gen Z want to pursue careers as influencers. According to the study, our kiddos see being an influencer as the equivalent of achieving fame like rock stars or sports heroes.Back in my day, we were fed a constant stream of American exceptionalism. It began with the pledge of allegiance at the start of every school day and every assembly, we sang the national anthem and were taught about our founding fathers’ fight for freedom and liberty. Today, our kids want to set up one of the circle lights, point a hand-held, cloud-connected live TV studio toward themselves, and hunt for followers.Back in my day, the only followers we had were the kids behind us when we were marched into the basement single-file during the nuclear attack drills. Those of us at the front of the line knew the kids at the end might not make it into the bunker in time and would be vaporized by the nuclear blast — we all saw the films in class.Those nuclear bombs we were hiding from were made possible by technology perfected by a team of scientists who interrupted their lives to develop nuclear fission. We learned about Dr. Oppenheimer and his team in school and how they came together to make the theoretical ideas of splitting atoms real and ultimately end World War II.I wonder how many members of our Gen Z population would give up their dream of being an influencer to join a government-run group sequestered in a remote secret location to create ground-breaking technology that would be used by the military?I found two examples where the best and brightest did the exact opposite:In 2018, Google experienced backlash from its employees over its participation in Project Maven, a Pentagon initiative to enhance drone imagery with artificial intelligence. Over 3,000 Google employees signed a petition urging the company to end the project, arguing that they did not sign up to build warfare technology. Ultimately Google decided not to renew its contract with the Department of Defense.Microsoft also faced resistance from its employees regarding its involvement with the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI). An initiative aimed at modernizing the military’s cloud computing infrastructure. Employees expressed concerns about the ethical implications of using their work to enhance warfare capabilities and Microsoft withdrew from contention.Like World War II reshaped the way nations fought with groundbreaking technologies of submarines, radar, encryption and aircraft, future conflicts will be transformed by autonomous drone swarms, AI battlefield troop identification, semi-autonomous robotic vehicles, and cyber security.  Will our best and brightest take a break from getting rich developing photo-sharing applications, innovative ways to hail a taxi, instant food delivery, and the latest social media craze? I think not — they are busy sharing a plethora of personal data that adversaries are using to train and test technology that will be used on the connected battlefield of the future just to share a short dance video to get more followers. In their book, “The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West,” Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska advocate for a renewed partnership between the tech sector and government to foster innovations that tackle challenges confronting our nation. The authors contend that tech’s desire to focus on technologies that improve pain points in their personal lives is a critical reason the tech industry is actively working to keep cutting-edge technologies from being used in the defense and public safety industry.I’m not advocating that we indoctrinate their youth through systematic rhetoric and mind control like our adversaries. However, we could return to emphasizing American exceptionalism and the ideals of classic Western civilization in our high schools and universities.Has the pendulum swung too far to the left? In our effort to lay bare the mistakes that are a part of the Grand American Experiment, have we sacrificed the patriotism of a generation?I know I’m an out-of-touch boomer, but I think the future of our nation and the cause of freedom and liberty would benefit from a little old-school patriotism in our schools — like we had back in my day. Ari Ioannides is a recovering tech entrepreneur, founder of BootUP PD, and serves on local government and nonprofit boards. He offers a conservative perspective on local politics. He can be reached at aristides.ioannides@gmail.comThe post The Porcupine Quill: A shift in tech values appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less