I saw the movie Big Hero 6 yesterday. The powerful storyline is an incredible motivator for kids and adults to go into computer science and get involved in the making community. While many of the tech stories we hear today involve pricey acquisitions and the latest greatest photo sharing app, the movie shows that a career (or even just a hobby) in technology can and does yield incredible results.
We are standing on the precipice of many difficult decisions as a society—health and wellness, climate change, energy consumption, food distribution, and the list goes on. Technology won’t solve them all, but it can certainly put a hefty dent in any of them. While we can throw stats and doomsday scenarios at people in an attempt to get them to care about these issues, storytelling like that in Big Hero 6 may be the most powerful weapon we have to scare up the resource we need in greatest abundance—human care and concern for the future.
Christa Avampato 