The youth will set you free

The history of the human race is an extraordinary tale of adaptation and survival. What if future generations aren't that bothered about technology at all and simply revert to a healthier, more screen-free lifestyle?

Peter Edgerton www.peteredgerton.com

Friday, 18 October 2024, 16:12

For a rainy Tuesday night in October, the pub was fairly busy. Six or seven teams had come to play the quiz and a few ... other innocent bystanders were press-ganged into participating by a somewhat over- enthusiastic host.

One team stood out from the others - three strapping eighteen-year-old Spanish lads who were chuckling nervously and mocking their own chances of getting anything close to a dignified score. I gave them a reassuring smile and pressed the microphone to my lips.

"First question - how many fingers - including the thumb - does Jerry from Tom and Jerry have on each hand?"

Cue excitable murmuring and lots of people looking at their own hands, although it wasn't entirely clear how that was supposed to help matters.

An hour or so later it was all over and time to reveal the winners. Unbelievably, the three teenagers had scraped it by half a point. To be honest, a few of the questions favoured a youthful perspective, notably one about the video game Fortnite plus a music clip featuring Bad Bunny (who, if he'd had an agent with his wits about him would surely have released a record called the Myxomatosis Mix by now. You missed a trick there, Mr Bunny).

Anyway, the boys were delighted - as was I - and they received a sporting and well-deserved round of applause from their rather bemused rivals.

By the end of the evening, something was nagging at me about how the night's proceedings had unfolded but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Then, as I supped on my lovely after-work pint, watching a fascinating episode of Columbo, it dawned on me - the three lads who'd won the quiz were the only customers who hadn't looked at their phones before or after the quiz (they're banned during, obviously). That's right, the youngsters had simply been chewing the fat the whole time with no distractions whatsoever, unlike almost everyone else in the room. When I asked them if they wanted me to take a keepsake photo, one of them managed to produce a phone from somewhere but it might as well have been a Box Brownie as far as they were concerned.

Read any article or watch any news clip on the subject and very earnest-looking people will stroke their chins and insist that our future will inevitably be festooned with all manner of artificial intelligence and technological wizardry to the point where we become mere passive bystanders as it marches inexorably onward towards its dystopian goal.

But, wait so fast, earnest chin-strokers. The history of the human race is an extraordinary tale of adaptation and survival. What if future generations aren't that bothered about technology at all and simply revert to a healthier, more screen-free lifestyle? To tell the truth, next to the teenagers in the pub, the thirty, forty and fifty-year-olds gazing at their phones, looked rather antiquated, old-fashioned even.

So, hang on to your hats - the future's coming, but perhaps just not in the way we'd originally thought.

* Four - Jerry the mouse has got four fingers on each hand.

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