PHIL NOBLE The other day, a group of friends and I went to lunch at the Eggs Up Grill in Myrtle Beach. There, in that strip mall, in a cozy family restaurant surrounded by all the tourists and golfers, I saw the future for South Carolina’s children, when our cheerful, smiling server took our orders not with the familiar pad and pencil, but with an iPhone app that zipped them directly to a display in the kitchen.

And there it was: By the time our kids enter the work force, every job in our state, even waiting tables in a small family-owned restaurant, is going to be a high-tech job.

This accidental epiphany caused me to research technology in the restaurant business and to think about just how totally and completely our state’s future is dependent on two critical factors: education and technology.

In the most stark terms, the truth is this — if our children aren’t educated to use technology, our state is toast (no pun intended), and our future is bleak.

Let’s go back to the Eggs Up Grill and what I’ve since learned about restaurants and technology. Eggs Up is not McDonalds, a global chain driven by complex data systems and international supply-chain management. Instead, the owner is Chris Skodras, who learned the restaurant business from his grandparents, Greek immigrants who came to this county in 1936. Their slogan is ‘Breakfast and lunch is all we do, family friendly is all we are.’ Over the years they have grown to a group of three restaurants in Horry County, with two more on the way.

They do not think of themselves as ‘high tech’ but my server’s iPhone app is just one example of how technology has changed the whole restaurant business. With the right technology, once a customer’s order information is entered digitally, it can then be tied into a digital stream of data with endless uses — tracking who ordered what, splitting the check into separate bills, accepting credit card numbers, emailing customers a receipt, managing the restaurant’s inventory and deciding how many eggs need to be ordered today for each restaurant, and on and on it goes.

Once something as simple as my order of two eggs over light with bacon becomes digital, a completely new world of possibilities opens up.

And what of our smiling server, in this brave new digital world? She must have the education and the skills to manipulate these increasingly sophisticated technological devices and system. When she wants to move up from server to manager, she will need to master other technologies for cash management, inventory control and purchasing and many more.

Our server’s ability to even have a job is not just tied to her use of technology but to her level of education as well. The more education one has, the easier it is to get and hold a job. According to a recent report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate was directly tied to education. They found that unemployment was 13.8 percent for those with less than a high school degree, 8.7 percent for those with a high school degree and no college, 7.7 percent for those with some college or an associates degree, and only 4.1 percent for those with a bachelors degree or higher.

In fact, according to economists, our unemployment rate could be cut by almost a third overnight if the unemployed simply had the skills required to fill our existing job openings.

The double bang for the buck is that integrating technology into education not only teaches technology skills but also opens the door to using the technology to improve the education process itself. Basic technology programs are now available to enable parents and teachers to track students’ individual performance in real time. If Johnny skips school or did not have his homework, parents can be notified immediately. They can see their child’s grades and their performance records in real time.

Other technologies can be used to connect online mentors or volunteers who can work with students to help tutor them without having to be in the same location. Online learning is opening up vast new opportunities for students to learn what they want, when they want it and not be bound by the limits of a single school or interaction with a specific teacher.

The sad truth is that when it comes to embracing new technology in education, our legislature has failed us once again. A few years ago, I was part of establishing One Laptop Per Child South Carolina, a non-profit group with the goal of providing an educational laptop to every child in the state. We were the first state to declare such an ambitious goal for our children and we made a great start, and then politics and the usual stymied our progress.

The plan was to raise private money to test the concept and then if successful to expand it statewide with the help of the Legislature. The total statewide cost of the project is relatively modest: we can provide every child in this state’s public schools with an educational device such as a basic laptop or iPad for about 2 percent of what we are now spending to educate our children.

We raised more than $1 million from private sources and equipped every student in 15 schools scattered across state with a laptop. The State Department of Education implemented the project and developed the evaluation of how well the project worked. In his initial evaluation, then Superintendent of Education Jim Rex said, “Dollar for dollar this computer will have a bigger impact in improving education than anything we can do.”

With this success, we went to the legislature to provide $3- 4 million to expand the project to the next level beyond these 15 pilot project. Despite some initial promises, the Legislature failed to fund the project.

So here we are — a great project with proven results that can pave the way for our children to get the education and technology skills they need — but it is stymied by the lack of vision of our elected officials.

Maybe we should convene the state legislature for breakfast at the Eggs Up Grill and show them the future. Then maybe they will change their minds and do the right thing.

Phil Noble is a businessman in Charleston and serves as president of the SC New Democrats, an independent reform group started by former Gov. Richard Riley. (phil@scnewdemocrats.org) (www.SCNewDemocrats.org)