Digital Culture
Growing up during my pre-teens I wanted to be a basketball shoe designer. I loved those wild shoes that professional basketball players would wear. And as an aspiring sneaker-head, I would wait hours in line for these limited addition collectibles. One day I was online window shopping for some “sneaks” and saw a shoe design contest. Immediately, I started searching for different tutorials on shoe design. Within a matter of hours I learned how to draw shoes and how to vectorize my designs. My shoe renderings may not have won me any contests, but I did learn how to use many applications on the Adobe Creative Cloud. This way, just because of my passion, I was learning skills that people usually have to go to school for.
Modern technological trends have created the best and worst of times for our youth to become successful. While there’s a feast of swipe-down vices out there – your Facebook, your Pinterest – there’s also a networked library of knowledge that millennials are experts at navigating. The new era of enlightenment has begun, and it’s going to be full of do-it-yourself renaissance men and women, who’ve left the academy for the world of web learning.
There are numerous do-it-yourself channels on the web. Additionally, every tome in your local book store has an online digital copy. Learning graphic design, video editing, website development, or anything else under the sun can be done just by using a preferred search engine. It’s an unprecedented age in which anyone with conviction can gain expertise in anything. Want to sit in on a course at Yale? Want to brush up on your trigonometry? Want to do it all for free? Being a go-getter has never been so simple.
The days of institutional certification for becoming successful are now numbered. A degree does not promise a job anymore. Business owners are beginning to recognize that potential employees without degrees can be even more prepared than those that have emptied their life savings for higher education. It all depends on right place right time and how much you want to succeed.
What’s more, nearly every millennial is social network-savvy. Getting yourself out there is almost too easy. Social media can ruin a reputation in minutes, yet can also be a meal ticket for instant success. Who knew, for instance, that you could become successful from simply getting pictures taken of yourself?
Curating the future of the digital culture renaissance, millennials are not as helpless as some may have thought.
by Cole Conway
