Apple and Google is hunting for programmers in the middle schools.

Invent "app" for success and become millionaires before you have passed puberty. That's why the giants of the web are courting the youngsters.

NEW YORK - It's not just the generation of Baby Boomers to feel disoriented or inadequate in the mastery of technology, compared to the Millennial. Now in their twenties feel your breath on my neck of a generation of their most fierce. The new inventors courted by Apple and Google are still doing the middle school. The boundaries of the recruitment of brains in Silicon Valley become more and more precocious. An army of thirteen and twelve years old flock to conferences to present their technology patents, they win international competitions, place their apps on smartphones. 

They end up in the Wall Street Journal the samples of this new age, millionaires before you have passed puberty. The economic newspaper interview on the front page Grant Goodman, 14 years old, and already in its third successful patent. When Apple last year decided that the new iPhone there would be no YouTube supplied, the boy dived on the opportunity. He invented prodigus, an app that allows you to watch video on the iPhone, without the advertising imposed by YouTube. "If you start so early - Goodman says the Wall Street Journal - have a length advantage over twenty-somethings." He has already formed a company, Macster Software, to manage its activities inventor. Knows how to put them in competition between Apple and Google, experimenting with app for all their products. It has a patented, used to see the charge level of the battery eyewear Google Glass, a tiny light. He also invented a video game. This was the summer of his farewell to middle school, from September to enter high school. 

There are cases even earlier. When in June, Google held its conference in San Francisco the annual I / O, dedicated to all inventors who develop new software and app, had to provide a special "youth program" with 200 participants. The youngest among them were 11 years old, and woe to look down on them: underestimating them can be a deadly mistake. Not to be less competitive rivals, in the recruitment of young brains, Apple as early as 2012 began to lower the minimum age for admission to its developer conference: from 18 to 13 years. Half of the scholarship to attend free lectures techniques Apple, reserved for true professionals, were won by minors. 

The creativity of this child prodigy is well remunerated. Google in a year has paid $ 5 billion to the inventors of the best apps, even twice while Apple: 10 billion. The boys deny that the gain is the spring that pushes them to give up dance parties or to switch to baseball afternoons and evenings to come up with new inventions. Grant's mother, Becky Goodman, innuendo does not accept or process intentions: "We have invested emotionally in the hope that he's the next Mark Zuckerberg. Interests us just be happy." And yet ... 

At that classmates can be cruel to nerds, as they are called nerds too good in mathematics and computer science. The B-movie Hollywood with incidents of bullying are full of nerd-mates humiliated by the most talented in sports or pick up girls. Subject to change their minds when they arrive home the first royalty checks? Nick D'Aloisio, who just turned 18 years old but he began in pre-adolescence, last year he sold to Yahoo for $ 30 million in its app Summly, which offers a quick summary of the main news. 

The young age involves some legal limitation, easily avoidable. To set up a company must be of legal age, so some of these kids abut your company to parents or grandparents. By definition, their crafts know no borders: it confirms the story of Douglas Bumby (16 years), whose JustGo app! (chronometer for runners) is already on sale in all the AppStore; Douglas who lives in Canada has recently found a partner to the antipodes, Australia, the 17 year old Jason Pan with which they created the company Apollo Research. And there is the case of Ahmed Fathi, a 15 year old flew from Egypt to Silicon Valley to participate in the conference organized by the inventors Apple. Fathi has learned how to program and create software app as a self-taught, taking a course online at YouTube. He has already invented, patented and sold to Apple its Tweader, Twitter app that reads aloud for people who are driving or riding a bicycle. 

The French philosopher Michel Serres, who teaches at Stanford University in California, use the fairy-tale character Petit Poucet, that is Pollicino, to describe the mutant generation of "digital natives" whose prehensile-inch travel at the speed of light on the phone's display. No country for old men, is not a world for old people, so they have even translated the theories of Serres on the revolutionary potential of this generation. Now also in their twenties should look back, compelled by obsolescence already lurking.