I recently saw a video about a 15 year old living in Sierra Leone who taught himself a lot about electronics just by finding old pieces of technology, studying them, and building with them. He was recently recognized and became the youngest person to ever be invited to the "Visiting Practitioner's program" at MIT. This got me thinking about the concept of the self-made man put into a modern American context. It seems to me that with recent increases in technology available to most Americans, why do more people not use this technology to their advantage and instead choose to live how they're expected to. Just about anyone in America with access to the internet could use it to learn just about anything they want and really build themselves from the ground based on any interest they may have. Although this obviously does happen sometimes, I'm curious as to why it isn't more common for the modern American to take initiative and pursue whatever goals they may using these newly created resource like the internet. Does the self-made man not apply so much in a modern context or have modern Americans just lost their drive to really make something of themselves?
[Sorry for the late post]
I believe that the self-made man is still prevalent in our society today. Even though individuals aren't starting fortune 500 companies nor being recognized like Sierra Leone, doesn't mean that they don't exist or that American has less of a drive. For example, the rise of microbreweries across the nation as opposed to mega-brands like Coors or Bud light shows how Americans are entrepreneurial and seeking to become successful. Furthermore, the internet might have become detrimental to to the Self-Made man in that instead of going out to learn how to fix a car, for example, they would just read up on it and never really learn anything. I feel that the self-made man is the same if not more important than in the past.
ReplyDeletethese are really interesting ideas! (and joseph, no worries on the timing.) i think it's interesting how america sort of validated the 'self-made man' from sierra leone through the university, and how coming from nothing is sort of implicit in the self-made man image - so if, like blake is saying, we have access to all this information and do nothing about it, we're denied both 'coming from nothing' and also making something out of that nothing..
ReplyDeleteI think this is a very good question. My answer would be that it is just simply harder and harder to become a self-made man. Now, with the technology and information production front of the United States as booming as ever, the need for higher levels of education make it competitive and difficult for someone to make an impact and really "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" because they need more and more money to do that. When compared to the time of Benjamin Franklin, there may have been more selection in terms of race and gender, but now there is more of a material object requirement: money. Today, a pauper out on the street would find it absolutely impossible to become a person like the one you talked about. The pauper would need to somehow find a way to sponsor his own education and learn computer programing, as well as have enough money to purchase a computer (or rent one or whatever way possible) to get to where the person in your story had. It is increasingly difficult to have enough basic knowledge. The requirements for basic knowledge are increasing.
ReplyDelete