Farmville redefines farming. Fortnite leads to virtual welding. League of Legends leads to digital twin virtual surgery. Joysticks and controllers define the future of cobot interaction. Fine-tuned Grand Theft Auto driving skills will lead to the design of remote autonomous vehicle management.
We are on the edge of the era of 24-hour farming because the autonomous farm of tomorrow need not be farmed only when the sun is up - and some kids will design and run the farm of tomorrow just like they do in Farmville today.
Unique motor and cranial skills honed on short, sharp shocks of tiny strategic movements lead to tomorrow's robotic-assisted surgery These kids playing computer games are actually accelerating our future virtual world,m because the skills they have picked up within the gaming world are coming into the workplace, and will redefine the world of work, careers, and industries.
I covered this issue some years back when the trend, "The Gaming Generation Redefines Industries," made it into my list of 19 Trends for 2019.
In many of my events, I talk about the real significance of the gaming generation while on stage. You see them playing a video game – I see them developing skills for our virtual world and the virtualization of industries.
I've spent a lot of time observing this generation and thinking about what their unique relationship with technology might lead to. Here's a story where I start out by talking about my own kids (now 27 and 28!) and their gaming world - and how he interprets the future through these activities.
I took a similar approach for a career education conference:
The fact is, today's gaming generation is actively defining tomorrow's reality!
You can’t discount the impact of this trend. We are on the edge of the era of 24-hour farming because the autonomous farm of tomorrow need not be farmed only when the sun is up - and some kids will design and run the farm of tomorrow just like they do in Farmville today. We might see a time when we will see millions of truck driver jobs go overseas because the next generation of trucks with no doors and no windows - and no driver - might be driven by someone in a virtual headset thousands of miles away. We will definitely see medical surgery that involves digital twin technology that provides for the virtualization of healthcare, with a doctor thousands of miles away guiding delicate instruments. The metaverse? It won't happen with weird, clunky headsets, but with heads-up display technology much like we see in today's fighter jets, providing a link between the physical and virtual world in a small and unobtrusive way.
So if you see kids spending too much time on a video game, don’t yell at them. These kids are gaming, but what they are really doing is accelerating virtual tech, because the skills they have picked up within the gaming world come into the workplace, and redefine the world of work.