We are at the outset of a new era in which it is hard to make a good life for ourselves without having any skills.

I had a small panic attack when I was boarding at the Stockholm Arlanda Airport the other day. I got out of the cab and entered the airport. The screen that is supposed to show the flight and gate information as well as where you can get your boarding pass only showed the former. There were people lined up in queues and a number of counters, but I didn’t know which one was for my flight. So, I went to the information desk and asked where I could get my boarding pass. He pointed at the self-service boarding pass machines. He told me that I also could get my luggage tag and then leave my luggage at the counter. The boarding machine was unattended. It gave a single boarding pass for both the flight to Munich and the connecting flight. It saved labor and paper. The security check was also labor-saving. Stockholm airport showed me what tomorrow will be like. Today let me tell you what this experience reminded me of.

After I printed my boarding pass in Stockholm Arlanda Airport with a self-service machine just by tapping in some numbers, I recalled my adventure at the New Delhi Airport. It was at the crack of dawn. A uniformed officer asked for my ticket. I said, “No one carries printed tickets anymore. Could I just show you the e-ticket on my phone?” “I have to see the printed copy. It’s the rule,” he answered. “How can I know that you are here for a flight?” After a short quarrel, he said, “Actually there is another option. The entrance doors go all the way the end of the departures. Find the door which has the passenger list for your flight and enter with ID verification.” Luckily I found the list at the third gate and was able to enter. Then, as usual, I found the counter where I could pick up my boarding pass. I had a pleasant conversation with two attendants, who were very nice to me. One of them very carefully attached the “cabin” sticker to my bag. He was meticulous. Soon I understood why. During the security check, another attendant stamped a seal reading “checked” on the “cabin” sticker. Between the check point and the gate, another one checked if my “cabin” sticker had a seal. There were a number of attendants responsible for defined tasks from the entrance to the gate. They were doing their jobs meticulously. At Stockholm Airport there were only a few attendants. The procedures were as mechanized as possible.

I believe that this illustrates the difference between the world of the future and the past. And here is the moral of the story: the world, Turkey too, has been becoming a place as in the joke in which a man who opens a state-of-art production facility checks all the machines with an iPhone. There are two employees in the facility, a dog and a man. The job of the dog is to keep the man away from the machines. Some of you might think that this is the distant future, but you are wrong. I personally know people from Turkey who run their companies via smartphones. This is the first point.

Thomas Friedman spoke at TEPAV last year in November. He said, “There was a time when average people earned above-average salaries and had above-average lives. It was the time of the American dream. Today, average is officially over.” When I was preparing to board at Stockholm Airport the other day, I recalled these words and my memory at the New Delhi airport. We are at the outset of a new era in which it is hard to make a good life for ourselves without having any skills. Those state-of-art machines will eventually appear also in Turkey. Its seventh-grade dropout population is now holding Turkey back.

The third point is straightforward: a population composed of seventh-grade dropouts is a shame for a country with dreams.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 15.03.2013