the secret to your future Life is hidden in your daily routine. Your past helps guide your future. My older sister, mixed adopted in a mostly white neighbourhood, informed to me of racial discrimination. My mother, breaking through glass ceilings as best she could in a government office, informed me of discrimination against women in the workplace. I’d look at classmates growing up and see who was suffering as I was. These artificial boxes of schools and workplaces brought out the worst in human socialisation. But at the age of 17 and 1989 I got on the Internet and it changed everything on how I saw the possibilities in the world. I worked with Children’s rights groups, including through UNICEF, and wanted to see Internet access on every corner of the globe. So even if people couldn’t be their authentic Selves in the little boxes they come from, they could at least expand on the Internet to be more authentic and find others of like mind. And while many people bring their offline Selves to the Internet, a lot of people use it as an ability to be free. For thousands of years, it was religion and trade it would tie the world together and telecommunications since the late 19th century. But the democratisation of information and Internet access around the world has allowed for otherwise historically impossible friendships and groupings to emerge. I believe the strong push with authoritarian politics around the world is the last gasp of an old order but Gen. Z with the Minecraft and Gen Alpha with the tiktok dances across the world. Even if they choose to side with authoritarians, they’ll still have a broader awareness than previous generations had about the diversity on the planet and without even realising that each generation gets more and more open to new ideas even if they feel that they need to shut them out, while the desperation of those who want to retain control will get more and more scary For a time, people will keep working towards a better future both for themselves and for their communities, and that so long as we retain the connections to World War other people, eventually the right people will get in charge to institute whatever changes might be needed in government and corporations. And even if they don’t, so long as the people have the ability to more or less freely congregate on the Internet opportunity for improved, attitude shifting remains. I believe in autonomy and self expression for individuals and groups and not being a woman. I can’t say what I think the future for women should be. But as Amnesty International and others have said, women’s rights are human rights. And so that’s the angle I take here. And since future adults will have been future Children, we need to focus on what futures the Children will have for it is their right, as it is every generation right to define themselves and the futures that they see the most I can do is do what I can to keep the doors wide open to allow them the most free of access that they can to each other and information. At the age of 18 and 1990 November, I wrote, white male adults cannot control blacks or women anymore. So white males, along with most other adults, control Children or at least try to, for they are the last that we can control. Now Children are not little adults, but neither are they dogs, and a future with strong women will be a future with strong girls, just as it will be for boys or whatever someone chooses to be. Our job as a society is to support and use whatever extra knowledge we might have to make it better for everybody to be more of who they are, whatever that might be. In whatever roles they may wish to play or not, I’m very lucky to have been able to see some of the future I wanted to see. And I hope you all get the chance to see some of the future that you want to see. This has been Kenneth Udut, November 25th 2023. Thank you.
[responsivevoice_button voice="US English Male"]