Fascinated by blackholes and exoplanets, my grandson tells me stories about how vast and strange space is. He tells me about giant stars with a mass thousands of times that of our sun and about supermassive black holes with a mass billions of times that of the sun. He even tells me ages of stars, galaxies and supermassive blackholes in millions or billions of years. I wonder if he just makes up these numbers, because when I tell him that his million may be a billion, he readily agrees. He boasts that he has a lot of information – which he does indeed seem to have.
Once I asked him to tell me something about Quantum Mechanics. He came back an hour later with a ‘thought experiment’ – he used the phrase – where a rotting apple in a sealed box will first degenerate into molecules but will eventually reassemble into a whole apple, given a few billion years. I don’t think he fully comprehends what he tells me. When I speak to him on phone, my usual first question is if the universe was stable and doing well. He says that “yes, it is doing well, but it is changing rapidly with runaway stars and blackholes.”
That’s the kind of new generation being raised in our homes across the globe. A positive impact of this era, rightly called the Age of Information, is that anyone interested in learning anything at any age, can simply go online and find sufficient information on the subject to become a quasi-authority. This age has spawned generations Zee and Alpha whose ability and capacity to absorb and reflect online information and tools surprises the Baby Boomers; people like me in their sixties or above.
When I speak to my grandson on the phone, my usual first question is if the universe was stable and doing well – he replies that it is doing well but changing rapidly with runaway stars and blackholes
As for my grandson, I am glad he has graduated from watching cartoon movies to space documentaries. He will turn all of eight in the coming July. He can read and speak English fluently but has no taste for Urdu, which he regards as a foreign language; a sad trait that many of the youngsters now display. When he can’t type well into Google, he simply asks Gemini or Siri, the Google and Apple AI assistants who understand the spoken word. When I gave him this piece to read, he objected that I had not identified him. So, my dear Behzad Kazmi, you are hereby named. By some key standards, however, as stated below, he is an under performer.
There have been many young achievers in the post Renaissance era; in the age of the scientific revolution. Albert Einstein was 26 years old in 1905, the year known as his Annus Mirabilis (Miracle Year) when he simultaneously worked on multiple scientific issues, including Photoelectric Effect, Photons, Brownian Motion, Special Relativity, the Mass-Energy equation and Avogadro's Number.
Then, there was Isaac Newton in the 17th century who developed calculus at age 19 and the foundations of optics and gravity while in his early 20s. Lawrence Bragg won his Nobel in Physics at 25 for X-ray crystallography, a work he did at age 23. Blaise Pascal published a major mathematical treatise at 16 and invented the first mechanical calculator (Pascaline) at age 16-17. In the 16th century, Galileo Galilei was 22 when he invented the hydrostatic balance and gained fame for his studies on mechanics. Lacking formal education, Michael Faraday performed his brilliant experimental work in electricity in his early 20s. Bill Gates was 19 when he founded Microsoft. By these standards, Marie Curie was very old when she discovered Radium at age 31.
These great scientists were products of an age dawned by the invention of printing press, when knowledge spread rapidly in form of relatively inexpensive mass-produced books as compared to the earlier era of hand-written expensive sparsely-written manuscripts. Even then, books were available either in libraries, which were few and had timings, or procured at a cost. For example, lacking funds in his adopted country of Britain, Karl Marx researched and wrote his Das Kapital sitting in the Reading Room of the British Museum, then part of the British Library. Acquisition of knowledge and techniques was not as easy then as it is now, when it is accessible all the time and everywhere through smartphones which cost as low as $70, using Internet packages – at least the one I use costs only US $2 per 3 GB.
Easy availability of knowledge in this era, therefore, has produced far more juvenile and youthful prodigies still in their pre-teens or teens, as compared to the previous age when genius emerged in fewer numbers and that too in their 20s. Only a few examples should suffice to demonstrate the point.
Kautilya Katariya, born 2017, was recognised as the world's youngest computer programmer at age six, specialising in Python and AI. He is an IBM AI professional and certified Microsoft Technology Associate. He is now 8 years old in third grade, but does mathematics at high school. He has also spoken on some world stage events on computing. Tanmay Bakshi, born 2004, is a Canadian kid of Indian origin, who began coding at age five. He became an IBM Watson developer at 12, their youngest employee then. He is now an AI & Software Architect at IBM and a Google Developer Expert. He is also a published author and a popular speaker. Santiago Gonzalez, born 2000, became a full-time college student at 12, and a master’s degree holder at age 17. He is now a PhD, specialising in Machine-Learning and AI with five patents. Mike T Wimmer, born 2009, became CEO and founder of Reflect Social at age 12 and was hired by the US Special Operations Command as an AI subject matter expert. He has earned his PhD in Innovation, and is the founder and creative mind behind Next Era Innovations. He is still in his teens and cannot legally drive. Seth Yee, born 2017, is an 8-year-old from Singapore, now settled in Australia, who mastered three programming languages at age 5, when he had to sit in an infant car-seat while riding in a vehicle. Sirish Subash, born 2010, won the Top Young American Award at the age of 14 for inventing a pesticide detector in food items.
Arfa Karim of Pakistan became the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) in 2004 at the age of nine. Her record was broken by Ayan Quresh from UK who achieved this certification at age five. Suborno Isaac Bari, born 2012, is a Bangladeshi-American child prodigy often dubbed as the "Einstein of our time." At age 13, he is a student at New York University studying math and physics. Destiny Lakimbi, born 2015, wrote her first novel at age five. Yes, that’s right: at an age when most kids have not learnt to read. At age eleven, she is already the author of the Destiny series of books. Thanuwana Serasinghe from Seychelles published his book at age four, Nancy Yi Fan from China at age nine, and Bella Dark from England at age seven.
These are but only some of the teen and preteen olds from all over the world who have excelled in their chosen field. This is only the beginning of the Age of Information. There will certainly be many more young whizz kids who will continue to surprise the world with their remarkable achievements at a very early age.