Campus Technology Insider Podcast November 2024
11:02
Future. Our intellectual, I lost that one, our intellectual ability, support, soul. Oh yeah. I love this. Thought, emotion, morals. These are all fantastic, right? And so when we talk about what it is to be human today, right, and we talk about the intersection of technology, the question is, where does technology play in all of this, or does it? Right? Or if technology is here to play a particular role in the work that we get to do, how do we make sure as educators and as leaders in our communities, we're still making sure this comes front and center, right? Our empathy, our emotion, our leading with compassion, our building relationships with students and our fellow colleagues in the education sector. And so that would be my encouragement too, is to always remember what makes us human today, because that will never change. Right? If I would have asked this question during Petrov's time, my guess is more than likely, the majority of the answers will be very similar. If I would ask this question before ChatGPT became a thing, the answers probably would have been very similar as well, right? And so I encourage you to think from that perspective too, is that what makes us human today is what's always made us human, and the role of technology could play is to also, certain extent, expand what it is to be more compassionate, empathetic, share our emotions and build relationships. So when we talk about the ability to be human today and the role technology gets to play, my story actually started in the seventh grade. If you're here joining us as an IT professional, if you're here joining us as an educator in the computer science space, I stand on your shoulders today. It so happens that when, I was born and raised in Houston, Texas, so I'm a Gulf Coast boy. And at the age of 11 years old, we moved to Ecuador in South America. My family is an Ecuadorian family, and we had an opportunity to move there for the next few years. And so, of course, as an American student walking into an Ecuador classroom, of course, there was already this, this announcement that an American student was walking into a classroom in this elementary school. And of course, I hear that there's like this level of excitement for me to go and walk in and be this American student coming into this Ecuadorian classroom. And of course, when I walk in, they're shocked, right? Because they were imagining a Ken doll walking in, a blonde, blue-eyed kid, and what they see is me, right? And there's nothing wrong with me, absolutely. But it was just not their expectations, right? They were expecting that stereotypical, what they thought that moment in time, what an American student was like. And I walk in and they're like, yeah, man, you look just like us. Like, what's up with that? And I remember that moment because I started feeling also out of place. As an, as a person that was, that was a first generation in the United States, I didn't feel very necessarily how I was fitting in in Texas, and then I moved to Ecuador as a child of Ecuadorian parents, and I also didn't feel like I was fitting in. And it so happens that in the seventh grade, our school opens up its very first computer lab. And it had this thing called the internet, and it was a big deal, and our classroom was the very first one to walk in. When I walked into that classroom, I remember vividly, it was, it was a room of around 20, 25 computers, and it was around 60 of us walking into our classroom, so we had to share it. And I remember pulling up the chair, sitting down there and just logging in, and realizing that the world was getting much flatter. That my ability to connect with another human being around the, around the world was much easier today because of this technology. And it was those moments of, of intersecting with technology that became an inspiration for me to become an engineer. And I could just imagine the amount of work that it took in 1995 to bring technology to communities in South America, to bring the internet to communities in South America, to bring multiple desktop computers to a classroom in South America. And so the work that you get to do today in your schools, in your communities, in your district, is that you are opening the eyes and hearts for so many students. And I just want to thank you for that too, because I would not be here if it was not for the work that all of you get to do every single day and bring this work to life for students. But it was in this experience that I had an opportunity to not only understand the world was getting flatter, but understand that the world wasn't defined by where it was coming from. It was defined on where we were going, and that the future was becoming not only digitized, but gave us an opportunity to lower those barriers of entry into different communities because of technology, because of the internet, and because of computing. And so that was my inspiration for many years and the work that I get to do. But the reality is that we are in a brand new pace of change. The pace of change that we are today is exponential. If I were to tell you that, you know, receiving this computer lab in the 1990s in Ecuador, I remember there was a saying that we used to say, yeah, we're just two years behind the United States. Like in two years, everything United States has, we will have in our communities, we will have in our schools. But guess what? Two years in the 1990s, being behind two years in the 1990s is very different than being two years behind in the 2020s — and COVID was an example of that. When we went through COVID and most of our communities went hybrid or full remote in our education systems, we really got to see the discrepancies of what it was to be just a few months behind technology-wise. And I think that's also highlighting how big these gaps are, but also the rapid pace of change that we're in today. Sterling Hawkins, the author of Hunting Discomfort, has this really interesting saying that I've adopted into my talks as well, and that's that the slowest rate of change you will ever feel is actually today. It will only get faster from here on out. And that is thanks to technology that not only Intel was doing, that, or Intel does today, but companies like Nvidia, AMD, and all these other tech companies are leading across the way. And that's because we're now in this exponential era of change. And when these gaps become much bigger, these questions sometimes become bigger than the answers that we have. And I understand that that creates a certain sense of uncertainty as well, but that's where I think educators thrive. You see, when we have bigger questions than the answers that we could, that we have for these challenges, it also creates a very unique and massive opportunity for us to engage. If we had all the answers to all the questions that we have in our education systems or in our communities, we wouldn't be doing the work that we're doing today. We wouldn't be engaging the students how we're engaging with them today. So I would argue that this rapid pace of change that we're living in today actually is creating greater opportunities for our education systems, for our communities, and for our students as well. And I realize that the pace of change also creates a lot of uncertainty. With that said, one of the first examples that I saw this rapid pace of change was actually my very first job. You see, I was inspired to become an engineer in Ecuador, and we went back to Houston several years later, I pursued my engineering degree in Houston. And if you know anything about Houston, if you pursued an engineering degree in the 90s or early 2000s, you're joining the oil and gas sector, right? And my very first job was actually in a refinery. And my job was as an automation engineer, which basically meant I had to bring all these computer systems, all these instrumentation systems, and basically predict or help these machines do the work that humans had to do maybe 10, 20, or 30 years ago, right? Because now we have instrumentation and technology that was, that was much more predictable, much more safer, much more efficient, and I could do this work, right, and it would create safer jobs for others. And I remember doing this PM with one of our, with one of our operators one day, and we went out to the field, and I was just having a conversation with them, and asked them, said, Steve, how many people used to operate this side of the refinery just a few years ago? He said, Eric, you know, when I started, we used to have 20 operators on this side of the refinery, and today we only have six. And I remember looking at him and asking, was like, What happened to the other 14? And he said, Well, they either got displaced, or they had to change jobs, or they left the company, or they had to learn some new skills. But you could see the sense of distraught because he found a lot of pride in the work that he got to do, but he's starting seeing technology starting to take over this work as well. And it was in that moment that I realized that my job as an automation engineer, even though I was making jobs safer, more efficient, I was also disrupting work. I was changing how the industrial model of work was already in place, probably for the last few decades. But don't get me wrong, I'd rather work in a refinery today in 2020s than in the 1980s, because of technology, right? It's because of technology we were able to bring these energy systems to not only our communities in our country, but all over the world as well. But I understand there was a sense of displacement as well. And so the question was how we're going to help the next generation navigate this new future of work that we're all dealing with. And so it was at the early stages of my career that I started asking myself, What is the role that I have in this work that I'm doing today?