Winds of change: tech evolution trivia

When we embrace new tech, are we evolving or just outsourcing basic problem-solving skills? To rephrase, is the YouTube generation smarter than the AI generation?

The music in our office building often throws us back into the 90s or earlier.

“I follow the Moskva down to Gorky Park, listening to the wind of change,” I hear my colleague mumbling while we wait for the elevator.

“Don’t you know this song? It’s The Winds of Change by the Scorpions,” he says.

“But where did I pick this up?”

That perfectly describes the music we hear in the background. It’s old, it’s catchy, and it just seeps into your brain without realizing it.

We did know The Winds of Change. “Gen Z could just Shazam it,” we joked at the younger colleagues' expense, before starting to wonder whether they even know what Shazam is.

I have to point out that the Scorpions changed the lyrics of Wind of Change after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 to stop romanticizing Russia, and it now says: ”Now listen to my heart/It says Ukrainia/Waiting for the wind to change.”

I was shocked to learn that some of the kids on the brink of adulthood don’t even “YouTube” things anymore.

My friend was traveling with his daughter along the Western Coast of Portugal when their car wouldn’t start. He kept asking his friends on Facebook Messenger what to do, while his daughter was relentlessly talking to an AI model about their problem to no effect. It took a third person, a random passerby, to show them a YouTube video on how to find a keyhole in their rented car.

I find this hilarious. YouTube tutorials once felt like a cheat sheet for various life situations. And yet, older people never got used to it, and the younger generation doesn’t even bother, apparently wanting to use just one app for everything.

We are mostly just ignorant of technology, as it should be. It is changing the world around us by promising exciting breakthroughs in medicine, for example, and threatening our livelihoods as it fundamentally changes the way we work.

But does that mean we should pay much attention to it? We need smart people on top of this change – technologists, activists, politicians, scientists – to help predict and shape the future and foster and tame the technology.

But it’s not going to be us, randomly discussing AI when the topic of the weather has been exhausted. Or maybe it will be us? Those who don’t know by heart computer shortcuts, who are faster at remembering the song than Shazaming it, and aren’t really fans of automatic office blinds?

When you’re trying to see the bigger picture, smaller details blur.

The Winds of Change are blowing. Here are a few stories that fit the bigger picture.

• Italian mother sues Meta and TikTok after daughter’s suicide, alleging algorithmic harm. In the span of just a few months, Irene Roggero Ugues watched her daughter Rossella's behavior change as social media fed her an increasing stream of self-harm content, before the 12-year-old died by suicide.
• Are we hallucinating UAPs, or is the Pentagon missing the ultimate threat? Forget the Hollywood hype and social media clout-chasers – the real battle for the cosmos belongs to raw data. With the Pentagon unable to explain 40% of its active UAP cases, we’re running out of time to spot the ultimate threat.
• One woman’s chilling story of being robbed via Uber Eats. Soggy fries might not be the worst thing to come with your food delivery.
• Germany would rather accept weaker cloud services than depend on US providers. The latest figures show that a growing number of businesses would rather store their data on a national cloud system and even compromise some services and lower prices to avoid providers from abroad, particularly the US.