THIRD MILLENNIALS: Forging Tomorrow’s Humanity
By Marc Prensky
Everyone alive today lives in the third millennium. But not everyone is yet a “third millennial.” Hopefully more and more will soon be—because the third millennials now emerging all over the globe—adults and youth—are the future of humanity. They are different humans from those of even recent decades—with vast new powers.
Are you a third millennial yet? Are your children? We each have a choice to make about whether we want to be, live, and act like third millennials — or not.
It is a remarkable moment.
Where Third Millennials Come From
“Third millennial” humans emerged from the vast technological advances that took place around the year 2000. The years leading up to then saw the invention of the transistor and the microchip, culminating in personal computers and the global rise of the Internet. Just after that conveniently-numbered year came the smartphone and exponentially-growing compute power — culminating (so far) in the appearance of Generative AI.
It is the combination of connection + immense compute power + generative AI that has produced “third millennial” humans.
Third millennials are the people who have embraced these new human enhancements and are using them to the maximum extent they can to change — and hopefully better — their world.
“Non-Biological Evolution”
Today not everybody has, uses — or even wants — all these new additions to our humanity. But they are with us — soon to be available to all — and those now taking full advantage of them are the start of a huge human evolution. Past human-created “non-biological” evolutions include humans’ invention of language, agriculture, writing and more. Far more than just “tools,” each of these evolutionary innovations led to different, and more evolved humans. Now, in the times in which we live, we are again becoming different humans—or at least some of us are. Each of us now needs to make the choice of whether or not to become a true third millennial — and only some will. I hope you’ll be one of them.
What Are the Differences?
The profound differences between second millennium humans (i.e., most of the 8 billion people in the world) and “third millennials” (just emerging) can most easily be seen in
BIG ATTITUDE AND BELIEF CHANGES—regarding everything from • technology to • property, • privacy, • personal relationships, • sexuality, • race, • security, • power, • kids, • work, • jobs, • empathy, • love, • violence, • abuse, • God, • religion, • justice, • money, • government, • time, • space, • growing up, • education, and more
These changes are taking place most widely in the young, but are happening in some adults as well. I’ve documented these changes in my recent books EMPOWERED! and THIRD MILLENNIUM KIDS. (prenskybooks.com)
There are also notable
BEHAVIOR DIFFERENCES EMERGING in both adults and the young, including • our ever-more powerful smartphones becoming a “symbiotic” part of our being • virtual communications, meetings and work becoming a routine part of our lives • integration of AI into more and more of our work and workflows • wide use of social media, particularly by the young • the rise of the virtual world as a co-equal place to live, work and interact, and, most recently, • the rapid rise of Generative AI as a means for both business people and artists to bring out imagination, increase productivity, and add value.
Not every human is embracing these changes — there are many alive in the third millennium who are rejecting, or who have not yet gotten access to some or all of these things. But without these enhancements, those people are not fully-evolved “third millennials.”
Empowerment
The people who are embracing the new attitudes and behaviors of the third millennium, on the other hand, are experiencing a new kind of empowered humanity — a rise in human intellectual and creative capability never before seen in history. This new empowerment of humans is just getting started, but some already compare it to evolution’s “Cambrian Explosion.” It will almost certainly be far bigger than the so-called Renaissance periods in previous human history, because it is far more widespread — potentially available to all eight billion humans of all backgrounds and classes.
Every human who chooses to become a “third millennial” is incredibly more powerful than their peers to create, to build, to realize dreams, to fix problems and to help others.
Becoming a third millennial is something anyone can now start to do—regardless of the means to which they currently have access. Those lacking technology can start by adopting new attitudes, such as the “I can” belief that more and more young people are now embracing.
Overcoming Resistance
Not unexpectedly, the new empowerment of humans is being fought by a great many adults, who put up many objections and barriers to its wide dissemination. Parents, schools, and policy makers are typically slow — or against — actively giving the new capabilities of beliefs, connections, compute power and AI to kids — or even using them fully themselves. There is desire in many to “protect” the young from all the new human power coming their way. But while caution has its place, I strongly believe we should be doing the complete opposite.
We should all be moving headfirst into the third millennium just as fast as we can, embracing and learning to flex all our new powers and capabilities.
Yes, we should keep an eye out for harms, like bullying, and fix them far more rapidly than we are doing — but we should not be holding people back — especially our young — out of excess caution. I predict all our kids — and many of our adults — will choose to be third millennials just a quickly as they are able. Those who don’t will continue to live their lives as anachronisms in a new time.
Early Adopters and Adaptors
Many adults are already far down the road of becoming third millennials. They are hard at work integrating AI and massive computer power into everything they do. Realizing that they are early, many of these adults are forming online help and support groups for each other, and sharing their knowledge through consulting and in-house projects. They are boldly forging ahead in the face of massive resistance — often caused by ignorance of how much the new technology can help. They are helping build out the new infrastructure needed to support these enhancement — and, hopefully, fighting to ensure that it not be restricted.
Young People
Today’s young people, particularly teens and below, are in somewhat of a bind. Most, I believe, want to be third millennials — maximizing their lives through their newly empowered capabilities and “I can” attitude. But many are held back by lack of understanding of how AI can help them beyond homework, by adult fears leading to bans of phones and AI, by the cost of using the most advanced tools, by parents and schools who lack understanding, and by lack of support structures for their third millennial ambitions. Yet despite all these current barriers, young third millennials are emerging. Some are even becoming wealthy in new ways through a new “creator economy.” Others are starting to realize the vast new power they now have to impact and better their world in a wide variety of ways. School kids around the world are just beginning to find real-world projects to do to connect with like-minded peers around the globe and make real-world impact. New kinds of institutions are emerging — there are already self-designated “AI schools” in places from Arizona to Pakistan. All of the two billion kids in the world already live in a new, empowered age. How easy will we make it for them to become true third millennials?
For those who are able discover and apply their new power, it is the start of something magical. We already see AI artists emerging. We see teachers who are waking up to the fact that AI enables students to do far more than learn the old curriculum in new ways. We see consultants and in-house teams taking business to new AI-empowered business models. People of all ages are discovering new uses and positive ways to apply the connectivity, compute power and added intelligence they now have to bettering humanity. While the changes are as yet far from mainstream, they have already begun. New kinds of industries, schools, support organizations, companies, and institutions are emerging. The coming years and decades will be a huge historic period of experimentation and discovery that will continue, as our powers grow, for the entire millennium. The changes brought about by third millennials will be vast and huge, and, I believe, hugely positive.
Humanity has begun a new evolutionary leap. Hopefully, more and more will soon climb on the third millennial bandwagon.
The shift to “third millennials” is a much bigger change for humanity than the short-term differentiations we have been describing between gens x, y and z. It is fitting that we have started counting generations with a new alphabet (alphas, betas, etc.) because we are entering a new human age.
Need for Choice
Whilke becoming a true third millennial is a privilege open to anyone alive today, unlike generations where you become a member just by being born into them, you have to take action to become a true “third millennial.”
To become a true third millennial you must actively embrace humans’ new capabilities for connection, powerful computing—and especially AI — and actively work to figure out how to use these new human capabilities in to better yourself and the world.
Doing so is the immediate challenge for humans—and it will likely help immensely with our current and vexing climate and self-destruction issues.
And There is Another Long-Term Challenge
I believe that if humanity is to continue to expand and thrive—we will have to address another big issue standing in our way.
The next big challenge humanity will need to tackle in the third millennium is our “human nature” itself.
The phrase “You can’t change human nature” may have been true in the past—but it may very well not be true in our new times. Throughout our history, the human race has always been held back when the less attractive aspects of our nature — greed, racism, abuse, belligerence, and bullying (what I call G.R.A.B.B.) — win out over the much more attractive aspects of love, empathy, gratitude and optimism (what I call L.E.G.O.)
With all the new tools and capabilities we now have in the third millennium — including as CRISPR and AI—we may finally be able to diminish the “G.R.A.B.B.y” side of human nature and boost the amount of L.E.G.O. — love, empathy, gratitude, and optimism — in each of us.
We can be encouraged here by the fact that humans have successfully modified other species’ nature in the past. Over a long time, humans were able to create dogs — now “man’s best friend” — from feral wolves. Will we, in our new age, be able to apply this to our own species — and do so safely and far more quicky?
There will certainly be fears and perils as we try. But I’m optimistic that our new “third millennials” will successfully find ways to improve upon our biologically-evolved human nature — just as we recently vastly improved our intellects with AI. If we do not, the gap between humans’ intellectual and emotional capabilities (that I call “The I-E Gap”) will grow much larger and more dangerous in the third millennium.
Our continued progress as a species may very well depend on our ability to enhance our emotional side as rapidly as we have now enhanced our intellectual side.
I hope we are up to the challenge.