I studied guitar and music theory in high school. Jazz, but not rock and roll. Then, in my senior year, I met Barbara. No more music.

Besides, I never knew how they made those sounds. My guitar sounded plain, no twang, no reverb, and no echo. It was not until 40 years later, in the late 1990s when I restarted playing guitar that I learned about the electronics of music.

After a few more years, I could play some rock and roll, and even jam with others. The passion grew, and for the past 10 years, an evolving group of friends has met at my house almost every Sunday morning to play and sing rock and roll, blues, folk, and whatever else strikes our fancy.

I have improved, but most of the folks are far better than I, having played and sung professionally. A judge, an accountant, consultants and educators, a stay-at-home dad, teenage children of the older band members, and many more, all play and sing.

I mostly play rhythm guitar, but I have sung a bit, usually with others and occasionally alone. And, I am getting there: realizing the dream. Playing and singing rock and roll. In recent months, more forcefully, more strongly.

Then, last week, I sang a whole song. It was not too bad. Actually, it was pretty good. In fact, it was my personal best – so far. The band clapped. Next time, it will be better. But, I did it! I sang the whole song! Yippee!

I fulfilled my dream!

What is your dream?

We must have been putting civics pills in the drinking water, because everyone thinks they know what this country stands for, how we’ve drifted from our values, and the way to return to our roots. And the more fragmented we become, the more everyone is certain that their view is the correct one, that their group is the right one, and that everyone else is wrong.

There’s only one problem: everyone can’t be right. So since we can’t all prevail, the only achievable goal is to prevent others from succeeding. Instead of building a consensus and a country, we are now fragmenting into smaller and smaller minorities, each with the power to block and to disrupt. Everyone has the power to impose their will by stopping and preventing others from achieving their goals.

Labels have replaced ideas, and shouting has replaced thinking. Minorities have the power to prevent, and we have become a nation of noise.

In the past, we feared the tyranny of a small minority who could impose their will on a much larger majority. Now, a large number of minorities can paralyze the majority. This is tyranny upside down.

This is tyranny from within. This is tyranny from ourselves in the name of our own values. This is the tyranny of the minorities.

Welcome to our future.

Overnight, our daily habits and lives have changed. Industries and sectors of the economy have been upended in the blink of an eye. Upheavals induced by technology are everywhere.

Steve Jobs played a large role in changing the way we work, play, learn, and communicate. As much as anyone, he came to symbolize the integration and proliferation of technology in our daily lives. But, one of the reasons we don’t have enough jobs is that we can’t adapt fast enough to the changes that Jobs has wrought.

Jobs is credited with changing technology, but Jobs’ technology changed most jobs. Jobs have been transformed, and those working at technical jobs have changed other jobs. The skills of yesterday don’t fit the jobs of tomorrow. People cannot change as quickly as technology.

Jobs saw the future of technology and other areas such as entertainment, communications, and education, but we have yet to really understand the future of jobs. Jobs left it to others to figure out what to do in this new world. Technology is important, but technology is often not a solution, only a tool – but, a tool for what?

Like the job of being a citizen in the Internet age, it is easier to see how the old is no longer applicable than it is to see the new that is emerging. Instant clicks are not always compatible with thoughtful self-governance. We no longer know how to decide which so-called news is truly accurate in the information age. While everyone has the right to speak, how do we decide if that speech is right? The Internet age makes it easy to label people and ideas, but it also makes it more likely that the labels are wrong.

Jobs may have led the development of a new kind of technology, but he did not tell us how to adjust to the new kind of society that the technology brings with it. In a society that used to value work and labor, how do we value activities that must be sustained by intangible products like advertising and other forms of air? Not just a little air, but a lot of air.

Many services cost us nothing in return for exposing ourselves to the advertising of others. Now, Facebook and the like enable us to advertise ourselves. The millions of us using Facebook everyday do not make anything with our efforts. We work at something that costs us nothing and produces nothing – nothing tangible, at least, in the traditional sense. Is this the new work? If so, who pays us for our labors?

Like Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell before him, Jobs changed the nature of work and jobs. But what have jobs become? Is jobs another label that has no meaning? No jobs bill can answer that question.