Charles

First off, I would like to thank and appreciate the author, Walter Isaacson, for assembling a spectacle of the coming of the Digital Age. It was like watching strands of memories and scenes in front of me while I religiously read the book. Most importantly, the rich history and information that I got from the book were unparalleled. I would like to discuss the interests that it blossomed in me in this essay. Although already a thirsty dreamer, the book added more fuel to my burning desire. This was the first non-fiction book that I read at 20-years old. I am a Computer Engineering student at the University of San Carlos. This book not only made me love my course more, but surprisingly, it made me want to make my inventions, or as the title suggests, one of the innovators. Growing up as an only son, I spent a lot of time on the internet. It was free and available anywhere by the time I knew the concept and how to navigate it. Yes, it was true that our generation would never experience the early 1950s that would make us tinker the hardware of a computer. And in the 1980s and 1970s that would willingly awaken our interest in computer programming. But I think that our generation specifically focuses more on Applications, web, and mobile, to be a starting point of a modern-day innovator. Licklider's man-computer symbiosis is still inherent today. Nerds, geeks, brogrammers (programmers who are buff and somehow attractive), etc. , are still fulfilling Licklider's Man-Computer Symbiosis which he published in 1960. The current generation is exuberantly focused on social networks or in the much bigger side of social interactions. Programmers, app developers, appeal to the masses to make it useful for them. This fuels the strength of the Digital Age. Even as a student, with a knowledge in C, Java, and Dart, me and my group of friends are starting to walk this path. "We are with the future.", as we might say. In the Philippines, there are no places like Silicon Valley, wherein, hundreds or maybe thousands of incubators are present. Venture capitalists are not even in any announcements or bulletin boards in our University. I think one of the reasons why Stanford and MIT standout in tech development is that they are more than willing to help students to grow and throughout time, they have tons of connections to other innovators and big companies. Those connections branched out more because they initially started helping their students while they were on the premises of their University. We may not be a step closer to developing our application and eventually be funded with a venture capitalist to build our own company, but we are driven individuals, like the hundreds of innovators in the book, who are ready to transform and join the Digital March in our country. Just like Wozniak and Jobs, Gates and Allen, Eckert and Mauchly, we are a group comprising of diverse talents and attributes that would resonate a solid team. The Triangle (government, private industries, and academic institutions) in our country is not shedding light on the aspiring developers. Truthfully, we are ways of becoming a big and successful company. But we are abiding by the rules laid out by the forefathers of the Digital Age that, to become a successful innovator, it requires collaborative effort to shape the future.