If you really want to know about the future, don’t ask a technologist, a scientist, a physicist. No! Don’t ask somebody who’s writing code. No, if you want to know what society’s going to be like in 20 years, ask a kindergarten teacher.

Stoll’s remark pushes back against the idea that the future is best predicted by technical experts. He suggests that long-term social change is shaped less by the next device or algorithm than by how children are being formed—socially, emotionally, and intellectually—at the earliest stages. A kindergarten teacher, in his framing, has a daily, ground-level view of emerging norms: attention, cooperation, language, discipline, curiosity, and the effects of family life and media. The quote also functions as a critique of technological determinism: even if technology advances rapidly, the character of society in twenty years will reflect what today’s children learn to value and how they learn to relate to one another.