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Rise Of The 15-Year Olds, Part II
Small wonder the kids believe that older people have little or nothing to teach or tell them. It's often seemed true. The Net fosters a "Hey, I can do this, too" value system.
Sometimes, the outsiders, younger than most successful business executives, score big -- with successes like Netscape, Gnutella, Linux, IM, WinAmp. Even though they're more than 15, Lewis would argue that such pioneers help drive the status revolution. But they're exceptions, too.
Look at the allegedly-overturned powerful institutions and their upstart rivals. The music industry is in less trouble than Napster. Microsoft still makes far more money than Open Source systems. The broadcast network's audience steadily erodes, but their evening news shows still have greater reach and clout than Matt Drudge.
The strengths of 15-year-olds are also their weaknesses. Certain traits of the Net-connected 15-year old form recognizable patterns. They tend to confuse hostility with communication; they shoot (or type) before they think. They can be arrogant and posturing as well as creative and energetic. They are sometimes narcissistic: they fixate on "me" media, blocking and filtering people and ideas they don't like or agree with. Too often, they see reality only as what they (or the people on their mailing lists, blogs or p2p forums) think.
Although they consider themselves ferocious defenders of free speech, in theory, in practice many find differing opinions infuriating. Online, they have not grown up in a civil culture. Often, their hostility is a posture, a veneer.
They have profound, impressive grounding in technology, gaming and software, but big blank spots in many other areas of knowledge, including history, politics, mainstream culture -- fields not necessary to navigating online but definitely helpful in running the world.
No question they're among the leaders of the technological revolution spawned in cyberspace. But they are also kids, unprepared for the political, civic, ethical and headaches of leadership, or the responsibility that comes with running institutions. The first generation of computer kids is now running the tech world, and they've been universally sobered by the realities of economics and politics.
Does childhood end when computers come into their lives, as Jonathan Lebed's father laments in "Next"? I suspect there's some truth to the idea that things can get lost and values skewed when any single value system or interest -- computing, sports, music -- overwhelms a person's days and nights and crowds out everything else. The computer geeks and nerds I know seem healthiest to me when other powerful things in their lives help keep them grounded: close relationships with friends and parents, religion, a passion for chess, dogs, hiking ... whatever.
Despite the widening cultural gap, I still think older people have some things to teach them. One of the surreal things about being a kid, of course, is that you have no idea what you don't know or might need. Life's lessons and experiences, along with history, ethics and context, can be invaluable, and they're hard for 15-year-olds to come by on their own. The reality isn't so much that kids are taking over the world, but that the world has sometimes made them technological orphans, abandoned them to sophisticated machinery that few adults bother to comprehend.
Margaret Mead wrote years ago that the pace of cultural change in the West was accelerating so rapidly that the young were coming to believe they had nothing to learn from their elders. And that was before the Net. Her prediction has been fulfilled, more than even she imagined.
(Next -- Your feedback.)
The worst thing is that even though they understand the ways of computers better than most adults their skills are in reality scaringly limited to the relativly few youngsters that can comprehend the lower languages of computers. Todays 15-years-olds only know the top of it; how to surf the web and efficiently locate information, how to connect to IRC and communicate with their friends and how to interpret simple error messages and act on them. As children and young people they have an easy time learning languages, they've learned the GUI-language. How the computer GUI talks to its users and how they can talk to them, but they can't get deep down in the computer.
The worst thing about this is that the ones who do understand often is more educated than the rest but will become computer-engineers, -scientists or something else within those fields. The rest - who know the GUI-language - will make out the rest of the society. As Katz say they won't listen to older people and take the knowledge wich they have to offer because they belive they are intelectually superior. They're not, they just know a language older people hasn't had a chance to learn. These people are going to get the jobs like accountanting, nurses, teachers and if it gets really bad doctors and engineers. The knowledge average is falling and if todays 15 yearolds don't get a grip on themselfs it will be a free fall and a lot of F's will be given in school.
Look a monkey!
See, I think that back 15 years ago, you had to be smart to use a computer. You had to read through books and manuals thicker and heavier than your computer before you could even figure out how to start it.
I don't think that the kiddies are getting smarter... If anything, I think they are getting dumber (I don't mean stupid). Kids now live in a world where anything they want to know is at their fingertips. This all started with the Sesame Street attention span.
These kids may be called smart. But they couldn't tell you what they learned in school today. It's not that they don't know, but they can't remember. The "Script" Kiddies may be taking down corporate web servers, but they don't know how they're doing it, they don't understand what they are doing.
To them, Code is taken to be just that, a series of commands put together to form a code to take down www.bigbucks.com or whatever. They don't see it as self expression, nor do they understand what it means. They just know that if they hit the carriage return, the server will go down.
Look, the fact of the matter is that when I was 15 (only five years ago), I hung out with my friends around the city. Wandering the streets causing whatever trouble we could find. It wasn't that I was a bad kid. It's just that, someone tells you not to smash a window, and it makes you all the more curious.
I remember my first window, the sound was beautiful. All that glass splintering and falling to the concrete... it was very satisfying, mainly because I knew that I would get in the shite if I was caught.
I haven't heard anyone tell the kids not to break windows anymore, and I am not seeing too many broken windows. I do see people telling kids not to trade or pirate software, music, videos, and just about anything else that 15 year-old boys trade, and I see that the kids now have a burnt copy of Eminem, have the Matrix on VCD, and just about every software application and exploit ever uploaded... But I don't think this makes them smart....
No, the internet kiddies are hoarders, and they're doing it, because people are trying to tell them that they can't.
the only difference the net has made in the natural posturing and arrogance of kids in general is that they can now pose pretty successfully as adults through the relative anonymity of the web. dangerous? sometimes, though the game's up once they meet someone face to face. most of them are just playing, and it's the adults that end up taking net "culture" more seriously than kids do.
"Why is all this crap here?" -- 4-year-old Brandon
Sure, butthe other half of your statement is wrong. You say ``Kids aren't wise!''. This implies ``Adults are!''---which is a blatant falsehood.
Adults can be at least, if not more, petty, arrogant and greedy as any kid. Not to mention that they are almost invariably in a position to do much, much more damage.
Kids may not be as wise as the most wizened sensei, but that doesn't give every adult the right to place themselves on a highty pedestal, point and shout ``Damn whippersnappers!''.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I'm 17, and I've had a job at this (really awesome) programming company last summer and this summer (and hopefully part time this school year). I'm lucky though -- my Dad is a venture capitalist, and that's how I got introduced to the company (he hasn't invest in it (yet), but I went to the meeting with him, and was offered a job when they found out I programmed). So, my suggestion is to try and find someone you know who has connections to a company that does what you want to do (or has a department that does what you want to do).
Anyway, good luck with your job hunt.
My plan is to pimp before they realize I'm a jackass. Hit 'em hard and fast.
or was last year, at least... I think this article is pretty darned accurate. I have always had a lot of computer knowledge, and I did use immaturely. Even only a year later, I see most of what I did as childish, and I am sure in another year I will feel the same way about how I am now. For example, I threw keystroke loggers on some school PCs, and got the passwords to TONS of students (and some teachers) email accounts. Seemed like great fun to go reading everyone's email. Then I "hacked" a server, which was actually almost entirely unprotected, all I had to do was get into DOS to avoid the windows restrictions, and NET VIEW. Anyway, I ended up with all of the HR files (everything from home phone numbers to SSNs on all staff and students), student discipline records, special services records, etc. and had brilliant (or so i thought at the time) plans of blackmail and revenge on all the teachers and people that pissed me off over the years. I kept putting off doing it until I eventually realized that this was not going to help things. Now I just use the info for finding people's phone numbers when I lose them. So I did mature, and I think it true that young people really are just inexperienced, though not stupid. And I don't think of myself as a computer geek, as I have lots of other things to do, but that I am at heart ;)
Heh. Actually, I was talking more about my jujutsu (he spells it that way) instructor. He's this little tubby Greek guy.
Eh, I'm not too crazy about most Eastern culture. Too little individuality, which sort of goes along with tradition and respect and so on.
People think of `Sensei' as meaning `teacher', but it literally means `born before'. Luckily, `born' is interpreted to mean `started doing X'.
And I have really no idea how to feel about my elders, my father especially. He spent ten years in college, and is relatively esteemed in his profession, but frequently seems incapable of expending the mental effort to avoid asking brain-numbingly stupid questions sometimes.
Eh, I just don't know.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Doenst matter they ACT like they are 15 - and by 15 i mean and IQ of 15 not neccesarily age
That's nothing. Anyone can conquer France.
My family was a "Nielsen family" in the late 70's. (I always left for school with my TV on PBS, just to help them out.) They connected the tuner via some encoder to a proprietary modem, and hooked up our house with a second phone line. Well, my brother and I got a Commodore VIC-20 with a modem for Christmas soon after. Just for fun, I unplugged the Nielsen equipment and plugged in the VIC, and VOILA! We were online!
We found BBS's, which led to passwords into corporate computers, etc. We didn't hack anything, we were just seeing where we could go. An account on a GM computer was a lot of fun. We had visions of redesigning next year's model, but it never came to fruition.
The funny part of this is that years later, we recalled all of this to our parents. They got a big laugh out of it. They said that the local Nielsen rep said that there were a number of strange phone calls on that second line, and they suspected computer hackers! Of course, they knew nothing at the time, so we got away with it.
I can't remember anything as thrilling as seeing "Welcome to General Motors" popping up on the screen back then. Well, wait a minute...yes, I can...but that's off topic. ;)
- Bill
I live in a country where we have our own language. It's quite complicated and POWERFUL and mostly just great. These new kids just seem to be losing the grip of it. They are completely ignoring the grammar and spell words completely wrong. Needless to say, it gives me a bad headache. One just can't understand them when their ability to express themselves is absolutely horrible. It's like looking at our nice little language 500 years ago - a lot has been already lost. The youngsters will not be any super intelligent and all-knowing people. Language skills would be required there but they don't have it - nor (as it seems) will. Shame. You just can't handle information and process higher thinking with a crippled language.
Hmmm, it seems to me that Katz is talking about a subset of 15 year olds, albeit a substantial one - that is, white, middle-class 15 year olds who own computers.
This leads me to say that I find it somewhat unenlightening to read attempts such as these to sum up a generation in just a few paragraphs (spread among a few articles). This has been happening forever, I know, (just look at all that has been written about the baby boomers) but I think that these writings tend to focus on shallow issues.
There are some interesting observations to be made about a generation where the middle-class and wealthy are raised via the Internet, but I think this sort of thing needs to be approached carefully and with much thought and research, which doesn't seem to be apparent here.
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe
> Most adults today have the perception that it's ok to just be
> a member of society, work, save, have a family, and die, and that's it!
I understand completely the point you're trying to make with this, which is that there are those who feel that going through life while avoiding any unnecessary effort to truly grasp the wisdom that falls to them is acceptable, and that they deserve respect even though they've learned nothing worthy of it, and I agree that it's a crying shame. You need to consider, however, that there are those who do the things you describe, and little more, and still manage to amass great wisdom in the doing of them. My grandfather is one such person, and I'll warrant your sensei is another. The things you listed are not things that prevent one from learning, and in fact most of them can be sources of profound insight. The point is that you should be more clear in stating to whom your message applies. To imply a lack of wisdom based only on a simple life is disrespectful, often of people who deserve that respect highly.
Virg
'nuff said. This is the best comment I've read on /. in a long time
Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe
Let's assume for a sec that not these kids are different but only the circumstances. Suddenly everything makes sense. Computers are just easy to use nowadays since a generation of pioneers and professionals have made it so. No, the 15 year olds don't run anything, and if they do they miss out on their education which still takes 10-16 years. Once in a while some kid figures something out. Smart kid. Something isn't everything. Still need to learn all the boring stuff. Telling any kid differently doesn't do them any good.
I get about 100 or so at work, between 40 and 200 at my primary home account, 20 to 100 on my listserv account at eskimo.com (cheap way to run lists, good storage location, been here since time began), 20 to 40 on my web account.
It's not that much. Maybe half is spam, but I narc those to the feds and ISPs.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Seriously though. Doesn't anybody else find this worship of 15 year-olds to be a bit creepy?
Katz said, "Does childhood end when computers come into their lives..." I sicerely doubt that Jon Katz has any idea of how the memebers of the human species pass from the so defined "childhood" age to the so called "adolescense" era of their lives... Just ask yourselves, when was the first time you felt a "grown up", an adolescent ? Probably the answer lies in there... Dedicated sciences (look --> Psychology...) do not have the answer, the limits of "normal" are not clear, if there are at all... Parents usually want kids to maintain their "innosense", probably because they are cuttier and certainly cause less trouble (I do not imply that this thought is delibirate, it is not even a thought, they seem to feel that way though...)... We are not the ones to judge and prefefine when a person leaves behind "childhood" and welcomes him/herself to the adolescense... Afterall, I believe that this is the reason we have this transient phase called "adolescense"... Try to visualize the evolutionary motives of this particular age, to which the vast majority of 15-year olds belong... It is a preparation stage, a trial and error stage, when a great deal of experimentation goes and should by any means go on... Now combine this with the availability of "powerful" (as the Oric-1 and the Atari were "powerful" twenty years ago...) with this absolute requirment of the human being and you go the results you have observed... Katz wrote (yet...), "The computer geeks and nerds I know seem healthiest to me when other powerful things in their lives help keep them grounded: close relationships with friends and parents, religion, a passion for chess, dogs, hiking ... whatever."
Well, would you know how it feels to be a "geek" ? Have you really asked yourself how some people actually think and feel... People with the innate requirement (which becomes apllificated at that age...) to challenge the order of things, not maliciously, only because they actually have a need to... Have you ever thought how passion fits in the life of a so called "geek", passion of all kinds...
Finally, I would suggest Jon Katz to read some psychology, before drawing any flaming conclusions... Furthermore, I would like to see and read regarding the solutions he has to propose for what he calls a "problem"...
Mystion (Greece...)
They aren't more intelligent. They just waste their free time on the Internet instead of hanging out in parking lots late at night with their buddies who can drive.
You spend half a dozen hours a day, or a dozen a day in summer, in front of the screen, you learn a thing or two.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
I meant to emphasize the assume in that sentence. In so-called primitive cultures, many times the elders are always the wise ones, but sometimes they aren't, and at those times, a younger leader usually takes over the tribe, because he commands the respect that the elder doesn't deserve.
In tribal (I guess that's a better term than primitive) societies there's usually an institutionalized age/status system, and while a younger man might actually lead, the older members are usually given respect simply because of their age.
In some cases I'm sure this is true, but I believe that the vast majority of kids, even from a very very young age, can tell who is really wise and who isn't. There's an aura about them. A knowing smile, but never condescending...
Still have to disagree with you here; I don't think wisdom is so cut-and-dry. You can have a vicious, curmudgeonly, condescending, sarcastic old teacher who might be incredibly brilliant in his or her field. You may have someone who is totally ignorant of anything remotely approaching an academic discipline, but they may be a master of something mundane. I think you can learn from anyone.
Our problem is that our present culture tells us we must assume that the older people are wiser, even though many of them are not.
Again, I have to disagree; our present culture is, compared to the rest of human history, amazingly lacking in respect for older members of society.
i think you are taking the point out of context. yes, we all fucked around when we were 15 and pulled girls hair or whatever. the ramifications of our actions were quite small, yeah?
now 15 year old kids are taking down corporate web servers, writing virii, writing software that negates copyrighting etc...
so, what i'm saying is that yes, we were all rebellious but the extend of our then-rebellion was nowhere near as far reaching and dangerous as "digital rebellion".
comic books are the root of the trouble.
I can't mod today, so I'll reply. Excellent post. I disagree with some of what you say, and far more simply goes unaddressed, but overall your points - particularly about the importance of being able to put information in context - are very valid and significant.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Just as an aside, the real reason so many students in the UK now take a gap year between sixth form and university is the funding situation. Most who take a year out don't travel, they work, to provide some basic finance to support them as they start their university career.
This is an obvious consequence of the government pushing a system where the educatee pays for him/herself (loans instead of grants, tuition fees, etc.) but the business world is not yet really appreciating this and paying much afterwards. (That is changing, but has yet to reach the situation in places like the US.)
Sadly, this means that the opportunity to take a year out and actually develop yourself is getting less and less common in the UK, however much carefully massaged statistics might suggest otherwise.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Our society has developed in recent years to assume that elders are superior, rather than expect them to become wise, and then share their wisdom with others.
I've got to disagree totally with this; first of all, the idea that elders are superior hasn't developed in "recent years"--it's an idea that's been around for thousands of years. And it hasn't really started to change until recently, when the mass media started inundating TV and movies with the idea that adults are clueless and kids can be totally independent, which is of course wrong.
People must command respect. They can't just expect people (even kids) to respect them simply because they're older. Many seem to have forgotten this basic truth of our instinctive culture.
Again, I don't think this is an instinctive part of our culture. And just about everybody deserves respect; it's polite to show it even if you don't feel it. Plus, kids are too inexperienced to even tell in many cases whether an adult has something to pass on or not; and in any case, EVERYONE has something to pass on, even if they're not some wise guru sitting on a mountaintop divulging the mysteries of the universe.
Am I the only one that finds Katz' fascination with 15-year-olds a bit, well, creepy?
John Katz writes:
"Despite the widening cultural gap, I still think older people have some things to teach [the 15 year olds]..."
Why does this get published on slashdot - anybody can sling together a bunch of obvious sentences and string them together to creat one of Jon Katz's essays. Jon Katz continues to be ignorant and oblivious to any real issues, and seems to write on whatever he pleases.
Don't get me wrong - I have found a gem or two of truth and good points throughout the the last year or two of JOn Katz's writing... but, just out of curiousity, would any other slashdot readers like a different author? I think it's safe to say that the majority of slashdot could care less about Jon Katz and his writing, and would rather push for someone more interesting and more in tune to the audience. Just because you have written a book or two doesn't make you better than the average slashdot reader who might have something more interesting to say, and can really feel what the audience wants.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Here's one thing all 15 year-olds lack:
Judgement.
Put that in crack pipe and smoke it.
You just had to go and make sense, didn't you? Party pooper.
-- Brian
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
No question, technology has given teenagers unprecedented access to knowledge and a medium for global communication, but as Katz does manage to point out, they're still teenagers replete with the lack of experience that implies. Now take 10 million of them and put them on the web. Expect chaos.
"He treats objects like women, man!"
- The Dude, The Big Lebowski
Great Post! Thanks for the memories.
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &
When I was 15, I hung around adults absorbed all the information I could, argued them point and counter point, began to understand what the world was before most people at the age of 25 do. You know, I have never gone for a joyride, I've never done anything *illegal*, but then again most people say I don't conform to the laws in canada, because they oppress a person's freedom. Now a days, I sit around alt.2600.hackers/hackerz and absorb information, and do freelance security and white hat hacking work.
:)
While the majority of 15 yr olds are cocky SoB's, some are not. Some of us were overly intelligent and prefered to do something other then waste our time. Just remeber, at 15 but I could do things you couldn't even imagine.
In anycase what's would you be more scared of? A cocky SoB who is 15 or a 15yr old that has an IQ of 185?
Om, nomnomnom...
The story is here:
Could you please let us know, in advance next time, how long your next series will be? We run a pool here at work, and whoever guesses the correct number of entries in your series. I keep losing.
Screw that, just email me the answer. I'll split the winnings with you.
Most adults today have the perception that it's ok to just be a member of society, work, save, have a family, and die, and that's it!
Despite the snideness, you have described, in outline terms, human life. There is nothing wrong with it, and it holds all the richness and wisdom of human experience in it. Doing those things is where wisdom comes from. Its harder than you think, and worthy of respect.
Think about it; when you were 15, what did you do? I'm willing to bet you snuck out of your house to go make some hell on the town, just like today's kids sneak down to their daddy's computer to do some packet sniffing. I'm willing to bet that you told your parents that you were going to a friend's house but instead went out joyriding with friends, just like today kids say they're using the 'net to "just look around" when they're downloading the latest 0-day exploits.
Come on, let's keep things in perspective here. Just like Brittney Spears, it's the same song, just with a different group of backup singers.
And Lebed's father wasn't exactly lamenting, either. In a _60 Minutes_ interview, the parents seemed happy and proud -- well, perhaps a touch bitter that the son got caught. Might have something to do with the fact that the son bought them nice toys like cars...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I disagree. I believe teenagers today are far more sophisticated than we were 20 years ago. As a teenager, my world was far more restricted, far more censored, and seemed larger. I think the internet and the communications and the vast information that it brings has broadened the horizon.
Defecation occurs.
"...Does childhood end when computers come into their lives..."
I'd have to disagree. I honestly don't believe that computers have altered the '15' year-old psychological makeup at all. Granted it has provided them with a heretofore undreamed of ability to connect with people they never would have connected with (hence the overnight explosion and dissapation of the fad-of-the-week).
But has it fundamentally altered their worldview? At 13 I was in on the first entrance of the PC into our school system (Tandy I with no casette backup even). And now I have a 15 year old son who currently lives for NeoPets. And I don't see much difference in his interaction, attitudes, and/or culture than that of the 15 year olds when I was in school.
Perhaps I'm missing the entire point here, but I honestly don't think that computers per se are creating any more of a shift psychologically in our kids than did any other technologically revolutionary advance (telegraph, television, radio).
I know a bit about geeky 15-year-olds; I've written a book and a number of articles about them.
Once, I was at the Tower of London with a friend. We were looking at the crown jewels, and both of us were convinced they had to be fake. As we were discussing this, a woman in front of us overheard our conversation.
She turned around and looked at us very gravely and said, "Oh no, those are real."
To further cement her authority, she followed her assertion with a whispered explanation -
"I've been here before."
Slightly OT, but this reminds me of a trip on the Metro in Oslo a couple of years ago. A group of elderly (70+ I'd say) people who had spent the day at the national archive sat next to me, and were talking about the documents they had read that day. One of them took an interest in what anotherone had transcribed and asked if he could give him a copy. The reply was, "do you have e-mail?". The first guy said no and that he wanted a paper copy, and was told "hell no, I'm not going to print it out and send it to you. Get yourself an internet connection. That's how all of us share things now." And all the others agreed, saying that "everybody" was keeping in touch that way now.
Yes, it is wrong to do these things, for the same reason it was wrong for me to blow up peoples mailboxes with pipebombs. 10 years ago the anarchist's cookbook was much like today's cracking scripts.
Its wrong but I'm not going to hold it against you.
This post lacks any historical grounding whatsoever. It's only recently that 15-year-olds have been considered children, and prior to the insulting modern-age (last 60 years?) view of kids, they could be intelligent, productive, and contribute something through real work at a very young age. Now they are given curfews, given little access to hands-on training that builds early confidence, told they have no rights and that if they even look funny (like wearing a trench-coat), they will be treated like a a criminal sub-element of the outcasts they already are. In former times, there were fields where young people always dominated or at least had very big contributions, including mathematics and physics, as well as warfare, literature and so on (aside from the obvious sports/film/music). Newton, Rimbaud, Alexander the Great, Cleopatra... Ken Kesey had written Cuckoo's Nest by the time he was 22, and followed with a possibly better book at 25, at which point he gave up the ghost literarily. Many of the well-known entrepreneurs like Ari Onassis or Luciano Benetton were already successful businessmen as teenagers. Need and desperation are two very good inspirations, but childhood curiosity is another. When I was a kid, we blew more time on TV & passive games like pinball and Asteroids. Now kids have access to machines that let them interact in duplex, creating programs and effects, and learning how systems work. This is not a substitute for formal computer science principals, but then there are many who graduate from a computer science curriculum with no practical programming experience (such as moi). Better to have some good motivational experience going into your college studies to round out the learning. But the main point of a youthful viewpoint is that every young person experiences new things as if they discovered them for the first time in history, and often this enthusiastic/naive/arrogant/beautiful attitude does foster a new approach to problems and situations that does create a useful new response. Wait till they're older when they can cite the theorem or physical law of how they should interpret their perceptions, and they've lost the potential for innovation. I've been reading "Europe: A History" by Norman Davies lately, and besides being refreshing to read something more thoughtful and involved than crap off-the-cuff Web postlings, the book goes into a variety of historical misconceptions and misrepresentations of "known" historical facts. Including the idea that facts are almost invariably warped to fit the peculiar circumstances of each age. In our case, the internet is prominent so we use it as a ruler. 20 years ago no, probably not in 20 years either.
Why do you bother to post such tripe? Why do you let his ramblings vex you so? I am not defending the poor guy - heavens no. I concur that most of his stuff is old news. But he's paid to write this stuff for the non-geeks of the world so they can try to get a grip on reality. Someone's got to do it, after all. Do you have to bring poor, innocent, harmless goats into this? And how would you be able to make the similarity between his ramblings and sex with goats, unless, of course....
"Despite the widening cultural gap, I still think older people have some things to teach them."
e ality cycle of purchased software once or twice, you just don't know how the real world works. And that cycle takes 5 years for a big organization, not to mention the $100M or so that a 15 y.o. won't have.
At a heavy industrial engineering firm where I once worked, we had a **7 year** development program. That is, we took new hires, age 21-24, who had already completed degrees from top engineering schools and had at least two summers of intern experience, and put them through intensive real-world OJT. At the end of that time, _some of them_ (some!) understood enough about customer requirements, interpersonnel relations, project management, and engineering to make significant contributions to the company.
Along the same lines, I have seldom met a successful project or program manager under the age of 40. No matter how smart you are, or how much you "know", there is just too much that only experience can teach you.
Example: unless you have been through the hope/pitch/buy/implement/disappointment/CLEANUP/r
Nothing against kids (I was one once), but let's get back to reality.
sPh
We found BBS's, which led to passwords into corporate computers, etc. We didn't hack anything, we were just seeing where we could go.
That IS hacking. You dont have to do any damage to be hacking. Its no wonder the rest of the world doesnt know what it means, when some hackers dont even know...
That's your qualification? Lots of people have written books when they oughtn't to have.
The Net fosters a "Hey, I can do this, too" value system.
That's wonderful if you define "this" as:
They are sometimes narcissistic: they fixate on "me" media, blocking and filtering people and ideas they don't like or agree with
I'm only writing these comments because I forgot to block Katz articles again...
Got Rhinos?
Yeah, but only an insignificant number of them will take up that opportunity. Those who want to learn, can, but almost none of the will. Which is really sad---imagine a nation of people that well-educated, that well-rounded. The promise of the internet, betrayed by lazy-ass, Jenna Jameson-leering at human nature. Bitch bitch moan...
These are the same kids who asked if they could learn next year's stuff if the curriculum ran out early in math class, instead of playing Jeopardy or Tri-Bond for the last month. Ah, nostalgia...
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Being 16 and having the ability to cost a company millions of dollars is so much of a power trip. We get extremly large heads, no one knows more than we do. It's just impossible. On top of that, no one can take us down, we'll never be stopped, even if the cops come to arrest us... no wait we're too good, they'll never catch us. Our parents are much to dumb to understand what we're doing. This is the basic idea that runs through all my geek friends heads. (Including mine on occasion). I think it comes from (well mine did...) that ever so popular writing by the mentor, you know the big page long, "You can stop this individual, but you'll never stop us all". I remember when I first read that, I think I was 10 or 11, but I was so giddy, cause it does hold a partial truth. Here I was 12 or 13 all ready to hack anyone who had the nerve to piss me off (remember 'nuking' w/ Win95? those were the days...) Now, I'm a bit more relaxed, it doesn't matter to me anymore who's a better hacker/coder/fragger, The Mentors words aren't so important anymore, and I'm focusing on my future... it's inevitable, eventually these 15 year olds will settle down... and its been my experience, sooner than 15 year olds who don't spend adolesonce in front of a CRT.
Find Escorts, Strippers, Massage Parlours, Swingers
... you must not be too good if you can't find anything decent.
"You know, the kinds of companies that are subsidised by the taxpayers so that they don't actually have to compete against other faster moving companies?"
Faster moving companies such as eToys, Webvan, and MetalSite perhaps?
I am not unaware of your point, but it would have been more compelling a year ago. The company I described (which is not a government contractor BTW) has never been as profitable as Cisco (say) once was. Then again, it has never been as dis-profitable as the "fast moving" dot-coms, either, AND it is still in business.
Perhaps you should think a bit about why all those "fast-moving competitors", staffed with 26 - 18 y.o.'s, failed the way they did?
sPh
Uh .. whats the problem? That my point is invalid, because I am 'not old enough' to realize as such?
... I'm assume you are saying that being older, but likely not as familiar, with these cultures would alter my opinion? Like, duh, but the question is, is the opinion as relevant and informed?
.. I don't see how thats related to the issue.
I hate to be the harbringer of bad news, but the older you get, the more out of touch you would be with the behavior of teens, much less the understanding of why that behaviour is occuring in the first place. (Unless you work in marketing or some other function where your primary job is understanding.)
Please explain how being 23 is 'the problem for me', and what I would learn from being older as it relates to this issue. Hell, being 23, I still participate in these cultures, many of which are dominated by 15 yr olds (the gfx scene, the coding scene, the quake scene, the blog scene)
Never once was I claiming I knew more or less than the 15 yr olds Katz was describing
"Old man yells at systemd"
I don't really consider writing a book, some articles, and exchanging e-mails as experience with 15 y.o.s. Raising children and spending a lot of time with them (i.e. 24/7/365 of dealing with the good and bad) will make you more of an authority on that one, but that's just MHO. It's a real distant view that you're talking from, Jon.
I think it should be known that 15 y.o.s who:
Think they know everything.
Can be arrogant
Are unprepared for leadership
Surprise everyone with their creativity
Need to learn from adults
/*drunk.. fix later*/
hate to break it to you, but if you have a keychain with a SIMM on it, you have an electronic fetish. ;)
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
Most 15 year olds are ordinary bumbling teenagers.
So are most 30 year olds and 60 year olds.
However the powerful of the Net is that it increases
the connectivity of human society in a way such
to draw out exceptional individuals.
The history of human progress is in finding
better ways of organizing groups of people.
For example, take the maligned "corporation".
It is only about 150 years old, but now is the
dominant method of generating wealth.
Previously people organized production in small
family businesses or huge state organizations.
The corporation had to wait progressive ideas
about property law and monetary credit.
The internet is another organizing force.
When it is understood it may have great potential.
This, I'm afraid, is profound truth. One of the things that makes kids these days disrespect their elders is the simple fact that kids have access to more knowledge than their parents did, or care to presently. For instance, when a 15 year old ends up learning about how the phone system works and how it can be subverted, and all sorts of stuff about politics, and starts to develop an excellent BS detector by reading press releases and then looking at the software that the press release was about, they start to feel very empowered. The fact that their parents aren't interested in what they are doing, and that their parents often believe what the media tells them makes their parents look juvenile in their eyes. Regardless of whether or not the 15 year old actually understands the things in life that experience teaches, they certainly believe they know what is going on. Take a look at the authority figures that kids see these days: parents, teachers, school administrators, politicians, and advertising. Most 15 year olds are capable of looking at advertising output, comparing it with what they know to be true, and realizing that it's mostly BS. Most of the teachers in our society aren't paid very well, and therefore, the most capable, most excited about their field, don't go into teaching high school, with occasional exception -- they become professors or engineers. School administrators are essentially the same as politicians, since they are hired directly by elected officials most of the time, and are answerable to those officials and the parents. Since 15 year olds see themselves as the subjects of the schools (and the focus of the school's energies,) they see themselves as the ones who shold be consulted about things, not the school board, who don't have to *go* to the school. PArents, I have already addressed. Where are the wise, caring, justifyably authoritative authority figures? They exist only on the periphery. Most 15 year olds never see them. I know I didn't when I was 15. I still don't, really, and I'm 23.
you call running around in the park screaming "Satan fucks me up the ass" as having a life? muahahhaahaha
There are certainly stooopid people of all ages...But i have no doubt that there a many more stooopid 15 year olds than stooopid 50 year olds. Life and the experiences it brings make a person smarter. Sure, kids are good with new technology...what about the other 98% of knowledge required to "RULE THE WORLD"?
But back to reality, and to the article. I don't see the widening gap. At least not with the 15 and 16 year olds I deal with on a bi-weekly basis.
One of my favorite stories is when on a youth retreat I was giving a short talk on "life'd dirty little secrets" ... which includes one of my favorites ... sometime, between the age of 25 and 30, you wake up one day .... and much to your horror, you realize ... mom & dad were RIGHT!
No lie, when I said that, one young lady put her hands on her ears and screemed "NNOOOOOOOOOO!".
Now I'm no expert. Heck, I'm a coder. But I'm at least cogent enough to recognize the following three things.
I'll say things, and/or give advice that their parents give ... but because it came from lips, and not that of their parents ... they are more likely not to roll their eyes and moan. Not because I'm some great sage, but because I'm convinced teens that age are wired that way so they don't wind up living in the basement when they're 45.
Second, 15 and 16 year olds get bored real fast. I've done some computer projects with them, for Boy Scouts, church groups, you name it. Alot of energy at first, but when it comes down to the maintenence phase of a project ... hello ? is anyone out there ... ? Nope, they're all at the Taco Bell snarfing down things that now keep this old fart up all night.
Third ... they do listen ... they just pretend they're not so they look cool in front of their friends.
The point is, teenagers are great, fun and a pain all at once. What I enjoy, and what I get out of them is their energy and their enthusiasm and hope for the future. While I would never want to be that age again, I do enjoy being around them as it keeps me a bit younger at heart.
The problem is, in many respects we ask teenagers to grow up too fast, especially when it comes to marketing and merchandising.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
Lets admit here that jonkatz' articles are really about 15 year old BOYS. He's ignoring geeky 15 year old girls. Girls don't want porn, and usually aren't as devoted gamers as guys. Why is that? What do girls go online for? How are young women changing the web? I know from experience that we are less encouraged to become hardcore programmers. But are encouraged to become journalists or graphics people.
As the internet grows, everyone can start playing on an even playing field. regardless of age,race,and social standing. Thats the real story. You guys are all talking about 15 year olds? NO, just geeky 15 year old boys. We all know why guys go on the net; games and PORN. Yes, thats right, free porn that you don't have to hide under your matress. Genious. Then, after porn and games, they go wandering and
Look, most hackers are NOT 15 years old. The very idea is rediculous. This is yet another idea put around by the media, simply because all the hacking attempts that have been DISCOVERED so far are done by stupid 15 year olds using windows proggies they downloaded from the net.
:).
Most of the hackers in this world are likely to be those who have grown up with computers and learned as the industry learned. People born in the late '70s, who understand ASM, the internal workings of the machines, the network protocols, the holes and how to exploit them. These people write the tools that the 15 year olds exploit.
The only reason we have the idea of 15 year old hackers going around is because it doesnt normally happen. This is why we have heard about it: It's very irregular.
Most hackers are likely to be in their late teens, early 20's by now
Of course, there are some 15 year old hackers who code their own stuff and are really 1337, and I can respect that.
Weevil
ghaa.
It's all about who you know... espically when you are younger. I started as an intern doing tech research through a connection my father had. If you can get into something that isn't your ideal job that allows you to grow into such a position. Use the people you know... let everyone know you are looking. Listen to what they have to say about your resume.
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while (alive) { Work(); PayTaxes(); Eat(); Sleep(); }
Bool
To me, this is yet another example of how our educational system (and I use 'our' very losely, since I live in Belgium, and most of you probably don't) fails the exceptional kids. The system today focusses on a learning period of at least 18 years + three, four or more years fore specialist training, ie college etc. Now this may be true for the 'average' student, but it is not so for the extremes. Those who don't advance as fast, but also those who advance much faster. For the not-so-bright, more and more projects exist to help them. 'Hey, everyone has to have the same chances, don't they?' But what for those student who are way ahead of their class? Zip! Oh, yeah, skip a grade, GREAT SOLUTION! So, genius or above-average kids are left performing way under their abilities at school. Some then just don't make the effort and settle for less. But ofcourse there r those who don't: 'the 15year olds' mentioned here. Intelligent, lots of time, unspoiled by society. And now, society is getting restless because of these kids? Come on! Most of these 'concerned' are just jealous or frightened because a kid without fancy degrees is doing things they never could. And then there r those who point out they lack the necessary people skillz and knowledge of history, literature, art, etc. Well, maybe some do. But there are a lot of young genuises out there who have all that too, who do know about history, art and culture. People just don't like to admit there are others who are more intelligent, succesful, creative then they are. And to top that, they're only 15!
The perception of reality is more important than reality itself.
When I was 15 I was getting to the point where my MS Flight Simulator (the one game I played) wasn't interesting unless I was testing a new modification. I searched the web for mods and mod creation tools. I was just out to enjoy myself and make "cool stuff".
Nearing the end of my games phase I went on to take an A+ Certifacation class that was offered free through my High School. At that time I wondered if I should go into programming. Either way that class is where I was first introduced to Linux by another student. It sounded like one of the coolest things I would ever want to try. Over the next few months I found a 486MB and some ram. Then for my 16th birthday my parents gave me a case,CDROM, and a keyboard. My Motherboard had a real home and I could start using Linux.
Over the next month I tried debian, RH, and Caldera finally settling on Debian. I started my days as a geek. I spent the next year and a half setting up daemons and anything else I could find a manpage about. Hardware upgrades came by pure luck, My 245MB disc was replaced by a 2GB and so on. I also got a full collection of intel datasheets, the stack is still about 2 1/2 feet tall. I learned a bit of C, and every so often would go back and learn a little more. I learned networking. By the time I was 18 I had taken my interest and turned it into a decent knowledge base to start from and I was still searching for anything new.
I am now 19, I am a programmer working on embedded linux devices. My study of the linux kernel has paid off. My study of hardware has helped me, though much of it is still just bits of obscure knowledge and hence quite trivial at the moment.
Being 15 is the time to be a "lamer" or whatever you want to call it. It is also the time to get genuinely interested. Skill comes with time, and the beginning of my road was when I was 15, it did wonders for me. I can't compare with those who have been working in the industry longer than I have, but I learned the basics in what 15 year olds have that adults usually don't, spare time.
Shaun Kruger
One of my favorite stories is when on a youth retreat I was giving a short talk on "life'd dirty little secrets" ... which includes one of my favorites ... sometime, between the age of 25 and 30, you wake up one day .... and much to your horror, you realize ... mom & dad were RIGHT!
... just look at all of idiots who happen to be adults, and all the elderly who have, despite decades of experience, obtained precious little wisdom. The point? Some parents are right, some are wrong, just as some old people are wise and some are fools. To generalize something to a teenage like what you did is IMHO irresponsible and misleading. Indeed, getting a child (even a rebellious teenager) to think critically about what their parents are telling them is often a very difficult task ... telling them carte blanche that "one day you'll realize your parents are right" without any idea what their parents are telling them not only discourages critical thought even more, it is, in most cases, simply wrong.
Which, of course, is going to be true for some people and absolutely untrue for many others. As someone who is 37 and has travelled around the world twice, lived on three different continents, and has been around a fair amount I can honestly tell you that my parents, both of them, were wrong about just about everything. I won't go into excruciating detail except to say that religion and rational thought do not mix well and to add that every human being, adult or not, parent or not, is certain to be wrong about something.
No lie, when I said that, one young lady put her hands on her ears and screemed "NNOOOOOOOOOO!".
Which, since you have no idea what her parents might have said, much less whether it was "true" in any sense of the word, her reaction to your comment might have been a natural, even rational. For all you know she was being raped by her father and her mother was telling her it "get used to it baby, cause it aint never gonna stop" which would be both untrue and appalling, and coupled with your assertion would make suicide by even the most painful means appealing.
Parents are no more "right" or wrong than anyone else
As to the three points you make, I couldn't agree more.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Weird but true.
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
I meant to emphasize the assume in that sentence. In so-called primitive cultures, many times the elders are always the wise ones, but sometimes they aren't, and at those times, a younger leader usually takes over the tribe, because he commands the respect that the elder doesn't deserve. Our problem is that our present culture tells us we must assume that the older people are wiser, even though many of them are not.
everybody deserves respect; it's polite to show it even if you don't feel it.
I think you're talking about courtesy here, rather than real respect. If that's the case, I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I don't think everyone old deserves real respect.
kids are too inexperienced to even tell in many cases whether an adult has something to pass on or not
In some cases I'm sure this is true, but I believe that the vast majority of kids, even from a very very young age, can tell who is really wise and who isn't. There's an aura about them. A knowing smile, but never condescending...
I've got to jump in and second this idea. I'm a technology instructor for the public library and week after week, class after class I have a staggering amount of seniors who are all interested in learning what a computer can do for them. Sure they're never going to become uber-geeks and contribute copious amounts of good code to the open source movement, but that's not the point. How many other people of all ages use computers every day and contribute nothing to the world of technology? It's unreasonable to expect such a thing. That would be synoymous with asking everyone who drives a car to design a better fuel injection system or implement a better carburetor for all domestic models. Woodstock2409's idea is becoming a reality though. A lot of grandparents in my classes did not buy their computer. It was given to them by one of their kids or even one of their grandkids. They gave them the system, hooked it up, set it up for the internet, and said "Happy Day, I'll see you online!" and walked out the door. So the seniors are left with this chunk of beeping and whirring pastic sitting in their dens and they have no idea what to do with it. All they know is that there has to be more to it than solitare. :)
Every now and again I get a child in my classes, the youngest being around 7 or so. They sat down next to an older gentleman and they had a ball learning stuff from each other as the class progressed! It was impressive and it makes one hold hope for the future if the "older generation" (I put that in quotes because EVERY generation is the older generation to someone.) can learn something about these new fangled computer from the kiddies.
From what I can tell, a lot of this anti-social behavior comes from people of ALL ages. Look at the Linux Today editor who "astroturfed". Look at the people responsible for the ILoveYou and Melissa virii. Look at the guy who was responsible for the "original" Internet worm. THEY AREN'T 15 YEAR OLDS!!! Yet, somehow it's the 15 year olds who get blamed by Jon Katz, et. al.
When the building in Oklahoma City was bombed, common wisdom (or lack thereof) always blames the Arabs for the attack, even though they have no evidence. Why? Because they fit the American "stereotype" of what a terrorist is like. Likewise, whenever something anti-social occurs in "cyberspace", commmon wisdom blames the "15 year old hacker". Why? Because they also fit into this convienent stereotype.
Occasionaly, there is a case of a 15 year old who DOES get into trouble, and they always get the press, and they are always held up as "the example". Yet, when a 30 year old gets in trouble, you don't see anyone parading around saying how Generation X is filled with anti-social outcasts.
Why does this happen? Because on the Internet, you have no basis for judging people other than their actions, so it's easy to come to the conclusion that so-and-so MUST be a 15 year old hacker, even though you have NO BASIS for reaching that conclusion other than the fact their actions fit your stereotype. Just my 2 cents...
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www.moneybythenumbers.com
most companies can't afford the liability of hiring a 16 year old kid. sorry, man... you're going to hit this a lot, for the next couple years.
we all know that its not fair, but... you have better things to do right now. right?
Being only a few years older than those children mentioned in this article, and having grown up with computers my views may be slightly slanted. but I have begun to notice that it is not only the children that are truly embracing and learning from the computers. It is also my grandparents generation.
Yes, they are not the ones that will help to extend the reach of computing know how, or probably ever isnstall software on their own. But they are eager to learn and willing to ask for help when they get into trouble. Something that I would like to see happen to all children is to have their grandparents get online. This would allow the children to teach the grandparents what they know, and the grandparents to impart some of life's wisdom on the children.
I think that in order to truly understand how computers are affecting the children, adults need to do little more than to sit down with their own kids and listen to them. Having just gone through those teenage years, I can tell you it is nice when an adult will listen to you and learn from you.
If you truly want to understand the way that a child views the internet, do not spy on their browsing or watch over their shoulder, get involved. You will find that most children are very receptive to learning from someone willing to learn from them.
Ah, Mister Katz.
You're a self pronounced expert on geeky 15 year olds.
May we see your credentials for messing around like a 'doctor' with all these kids?
What percentage of the kids' parents know you're messing with their kid's minds?
there are an incredible number of 15yolds who are incredibly intelligent and resourceful
No more so than in any other age group; kids today are the same as the previous few generations, they just are lucky enough to get so many opportunities.
I tend to disagree on the point of young folk missing out on other subjects such as social science (history, geography etc.), not having good relationships with friends and such. I'm 13 and am very 'into' computers (like the 15-year-olds described in the article, only without the script-kiddie wannabe mentality, the will to write virii and so on) but also have a good interest in other subjects. In fact, I think that young people have more of an interest in subjects like history and the rest, if they have access to the web and learn about the internals of computers (among other things). That latter point there might strike you, but I believe it could help develop learning skills (since most young teens, especially males find technology interesting and want to find out more about it) which are then applied in the classroom. It isn't noticable, I know, but it probably does have some sort of effect.
I don't think it's just me either.
You were expecting a sig?
My neighbor kid just earned a whole lot of ACNE. Any he's just 14. Kids today...
How perfectly goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure. - Charles Crumb
The trick isn't to find a small company (we're 41,000+) - it's to have something to offer the company. Even better, be able to offer them something they can't get anywhere else.
Most kids today, even at 16, aren't mature enough to handle a real job. I'm 20, and I have a career job. I couldn't have done it at 16. 18, maybe. 19, I did. You need to be human. Not cocky. You need to understand that you probably don't have all that much to offer that they can't get from someone that's probably more reliable than you are. Why hire a 16 year old to do shell scripting when you can get a 25 year old that has reliable transportation and a few years of work experience?
Younger kids have too much working against them: issues that employers don't want to deal with, lack of experience, lack of a degree (which tells an employer "Hi, I'm tough enough to stick out 4 long years to get this piece of paper" - lucky, I got by without this one), etc.
My advice to the kids: get a job at Pizza Hut or the local grocery store or Wal Mart and start saving your cash. Get your own computer to practice stuff on. Get good with UNIX (a *lot* of companies need people with UNIX experience). Start programming. Send your resume not to 5 companies, but to 500. Develop your own style. Make a good impression in an interview. Ask your dad how to do this. Life's not easy. There aren't career jobs for 16 year olds. Maybe if you're lucky, you'll be ready for one by the time you're 19. Start now.
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
What is on your resume at age 16? Have you contacted the folks you sent resumes to? If not, the hiring managers figure (and rightly so) that you don't have the necessary job skills if you can't do follow-up. They probably feel like you are expecting them to fawn all over you because you happen to be bright.
The fact that you expect to land a tech job based upon a resume with what has to be limited work experience and you only sent it to five companies and then just sat by waiting for one of them to call you is telling.
I think that everyone is working against me.
The fact is, you're working against yourself. You're probably a person who learns well on your own, so I'd suggest getting some books on how to develop job skills, do interviews, write resumes, etc. Get some "How to sell stuff" books and learn how to market yourself.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
The vast majority of americans can't find Rwanda on a map, let alone discourse knowledgeably about the factors that cause ethinic striff an genocide. Their understanding of politics and economics at any age is farcical. So why would being a geek automatically exempt one from these blindnesses?
Once again, Mr Katz brings up an interesting issue. But once again addresses it without rigor. Mr Katz, being an alternative to big media sound-bites is not merely a matter of bringing up issues that they ignore, it is a matter of METHODOLOGY.
I submit to you some suggestions to experiment with:
1)Go through your writing and do a simple old propositional analysis (p or not p).
2)When you are comfortable with step 1, try using Hegalian dialectic.
3)When you are all ready to go, come back with a post-structuralist chainsaw and some deconstructionist C4 and give us the articles we have been waiting for.
-Peace and love are for rich people only.
It's nota my planet, monkey-boy - Dr Lizardo.
Todays society has spawned techno nerds of various degrees and much of what was said in the article is quite true, but only to a certain degree. I personally have seen many "children" with strong political thoughts, knowladge of history and a wealth of knowladge about what they believe in, plus that which is only aquired through self study because of inadiquate schools. I don not belive that the sub class of the youth today is computer-literate or not. It seems to me to be the close-minded, and the open-minded. Close minded focus only on what is in front of them, their hobbies, and other intrests, what effects them right then and there. Open-minded look around from time to time to see life in all its beauty, and splender. I have been in both catagories, and I am now that much stronger for it.
I fiddled with them, learned the basics of programming, did some repairs. It was a hell of a lot of fun, but there really wasn't that much I could do, since I only got a few hours a day with them when I was lucky, and I had almost zero information on how they worked. I persevered, managed to find a couple of books and magazines, and stole time from classes to the point where I would have failed 8th grade if I hadn't moved to another city first and my records got "lost" (did I mention that these same Apple ]['s were used to store school records?). Anyway, the next year I was in a school with no computers and wound up on the football team, grew up to work in construction and then joined the Air Force as an electronics tech.
It's hard to describe what discovering the Internet while I was in the Air Force was like. Imagine you have this overpowering thirst, and all you have to drink through is a little cocktail straw. That was what my entire life had been like for me and learning, there was so much capacity for information in my head, and I couldn't even come close to satisfying it. The things I wanted to know weren't in the library, or if they were they were in this incredibly cryptic academic language I couldn't follow.
In 93, that changed completely. Here was an incredible amount of information at my fingertips, and people who understood it and were willing to explain it to me. It was like going from that cocktail straw to a 4 inch firehose: For the first time in my life, the only limit on how much I could learn was how fast I could read and how long I could stay awake.
I was still young enough to make the switch back to my geek roots, but I have to wonder, if I had been a few years older when the Internet came around to something the public could reach, what would have happened? How many bright kids, without the money to go to college or the discipline to work their way through, lapsed into discontented mundanity like I almost did?
Now, kids like I was don't have to deal with the conformity-hammering pressures that turned me into a jock and a construction worker. While still young enough to have flexibility of mind, and the physical support of their parents, they get access to this *incredible* resource, in which they can find out literally *anything*. So you get kids like Lebed and company, who can reach their full potential, and that potential turns out to be phenomenal.
Do they lack maturity? Yeah, they do. Only time and mistakes can confer maturity. That's not the important question. the important question, is maturity neccessarily the enemy of flexibility and capacity to absorb information? When these kids *do* grow up, will they be supplanted by a new batch and become the old guard? Or are we at a transition point of history, from one where most of our best and brightest are stunted by their upbringing to one where we can expect a *lot* of people who are extremely intelligent, extremely knowledgable, comfortable with change, *and* have the advantages that experience gives?
I officially became old the other day. I walked into a shoe store and looked at these shoes that could have been props from a sci-fi movie, and realized that I would feel completely ridiculous wearing them. It has to make me wonder: Right now, I'm working on the cutting edge, but in five years am I going to be looking at a 20-something who knows things about what the world has become I can't understand? Will that 15 year-old now, 20-something then, find himself equally supplanted in 10 more years?
It's been said that experience is nothing more than the opportunity to practice your mistakes. Is that joke going to become a truism?
--Dave Rickey
Working at WalMart does not give you any valuable experience at all, so why waste your time doing that?
Working at WalMart gives a person something you yourself say is very important: social skills! If a 16-year-old hasn't got the social skills to hack working there, he'll soon learn, or go down in flames.
We gotta make democracy safe for the world! -- Pogo
Yea that's all great, and a lot of them use the web for porn too!
It's the whole thing about being a teenager, and thinking that adults are just so stoopid, and thinking that you know everything... and then you hit 24/25 and realise that you knew nothing then, and you still know nothing now :)
The older I get, the more I realise I don't know.
Funny you should mention this.
Most USians are overweight.
Most USians do not "do anything."
Most USians only live longer because medical advances allow them to have quintuple bypass surgery on their fat asses.
I am a USian, but I do not agree with the lifestyles the media and the politcos push onto us.
And for the record I prefer UnitedStatesman to USian because it sounds regal. Unfortunately, there is nothing regal about the US.
Good day...
Well if you're a 16-year-old and are trying to get a tech job that an adult would normally fill, of course you're having trouble... Companies have more than enough applicants now especially since tech ppl are getting laid off at certain companies. And there's no applicant shortage, as has been explained in lots of recent articles. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/07/29/023924 1&mode=nested
I don't know what you're looking to do, but it's probably something that they could get a college intern to do and there are plenty of those willing to take jobs.
I suggest you inquire at small local companies. Maybe develop a flyer advertising your services and distribute it throughout the community. Small mom+pop type of places are much more likely to hire you than a large company. Also, you're 16... many companies don't hire that young.
I'm a geek and I'm studying in Humanities. I know my history, I have taken many Politics, Sociology and Economy courses and yes, I think I have a better understanding of the society than some 15-years old gamer who knows the complete history of the Diablo world but not of his own society.
Katz again: "Most people use the computer network for amusement, treating it much the same way they use TV." Most people rarely watch documentaries on TV. Children will never rule the world if they don't even want to learn about this world. They'll be stuck in the Net, ruling it (or fighting it) from their basement and they'll die like mundanes.
All Hail Discordia. Hail Eris. Fnord.
... as a 16-year-old, I've been having a lot of trouble finding a job. Everyone is:
:P While I was a bit arrogant at 15, I certainly didn't filter out anybody I didn't like.
-not hiring
-wants an MCSE or a CNE or any other BS certification
-wants a college degree for tech suppr0t
I've sent my resume out to five different companies and haven't heard back from one. I've had my friends check their connections to different people. No one is hiring. Drives me nuts.
Really, only Katz thinks that 15-year-olds are the leaders of the Net. I think that everyone is working against me.
Thought that was relevant here.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Well, I am a recent 15-year-old (I'm actually 16, almost 17 now, but...) I do think there is one thing about the internet that tends to create that "hacker's itch" where none existed.
:)
I have always felt that so-called hacker's itch, and i've been using computers since my dad showed me his Atari ST 1040 before I could read (and I was drawing on it, too!). I was always interested in learning about computers, but something solidified it for me.
Everything changed since I've started using the 'net... it's the fact that I can communicate with others, all around the world, for free. It's like the Ham radio's of the stone age (which my dad talked on religiously when he was my age).
This communication factor is what inspires me, and many others, to do what we do.
By the way... "what we do" is write code. Lots.
-- Reverius, JAPHD (just another perl hacker, dammit)
For the most part the adults of America are not very knowledgable about history and politics. Very few people have a deep enough understanding of anything to do anything outside of their daily lives and their field of interest, whether it be plumbing or tellamarketing. As as far as the statement, "They are smart, creative, and know the inner workings of the the Net and the Web better than any other sub-set of the species", I think this is true for a very small subset of the kids of the subset of kids that know more then how to use aol and check their mail on hotmail. Very few could program the router or design a packet switch network. . . as far as being able to download some songs from each other and stuff like that, wooop-d-doooo, they can run a client that someone else wrote that allows them to do something nifty. Sure some kids are advanced, some really are hackers, even back in the 60's there were kids at the MIT lab between the ages of 14 and 17 that were hacking on PDP machines and being brilliant, but a couple hundred years ago those were the same kids that would be doing it in math or blacksmith'ing'. Whatever though, I agree with the first guys reply.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
I am one of these 15 year old techno 'nerds'. We are not socially inept geeks with a fetish for electronics, everyone I know who knows anything about 'puters leads a normal life. The first 12 hours of the day is normal, you can't tell us between and non-techies aside from our keychains made out of old SIMMS. After the first twelve hours of the day, we spend another 8 of it doing computer stuff, or sometimes certain illegal phone acts. It's a way of life for us to do these things at night, where you wont be discriminated. So, in conclusion, be careful to the teen you are messing with, because you never know if he's 31337 or not.
"i am your apocalypse, i am your belief unwraugt, monolithic juggernaught,i'm the illegitimate son of god." -KMFDM
This is an interesting point and as an MIS manager (admittedly in australia but i think this is relevant) i will point out what i look for in young staff (and often staff in general)
- Enthusiasm - this means you want to work in IT and are willing to do the hours - note please this does not mean that if you are an uber leet linux hacker you are enthusiastic - Corporate IT deals with clients so you have to be enthusastic at dealing with their problems
- Experience - sorry guys if you dont have it then you will find getting work hard - MCSE's do NOT count as experience - if a 14 year old kid can get one if he pays the money then they are no balance of skill - the answers to the exams and information is readily available thus they are not worth the paper they are printed on without relevant experience to back it up - this means minimum 12 months in my case - and it must be relevant - if you have an MCSE (you finished it last week) but 5 years experience as a helpdesk operator or a programmer then im afraid you wont get a job with most companies as a network admin. (NOte i dont exclude graduates here - my experience of managing and hiring graudates is they come out of Uni with great skills in some areas but lousy skills in many others - most of them have no practical experience in IT) and finally a comment on relevance - working in Radios Shack or Frys etc in the service dept even is a good job but it doesnt qualify you to start as a network admin for me - i wont hire staff for technical support without helpdesk experience - its where i started and where all my staff start (even my senior guys have too do 2 weeks helpdesk to get the feel of the company when they start)
- Humility - the number one fault i see in young applicants is arrogance. They think they know it all and have no time for anyone who does not agree - they often have very strong opinions but lack the tact to control themselves. Remeber that when you go for a job the employer is hiring you for what he wants - if the job is as a Desktop Support engineer in an MS house running Dell machines then you MUST be willing to do this job without complaining (and evangalising about Linux every day is the same as complianing) - you dont make the decsions on Os's etc at lower levels and at higher levels you do what the company asks - this is the price of taking the dollar BUT
- Intelligence - I personally look for staff who will think outside of the box and suggest things that may improve our systems - maybe cost saving network ideas, patches for servers, new ways to work, and thus you should always be willing to offer reasoned and intelligent comment (if your company wants it) But be carefull this becomes arrogance all too often - learn humility.
-Appearance - You would not believe the number of times i have had applicants turn up unshaven, dressed in rumpled clothes or T Shirts and jeans ! im only young so i try to see past it but this organsiation is a Suit and Tie workplace - i expect an interviewee to at the very least wear a clean pressed shirt , a tie, work shoes and be clean and presentable (brushed teeth, hair etc) if you can't turn up and interview with me looking like you want the job then you are not gonna get it - and my advice to all of you is buy a suit - spend what you can afford - and good shoes and look after them - i am always impressed with a youn guy who hs taken the time and effort to prepare
- Preparation - learn about the company (at least know how big they are and what they do) you all have web access so there is NO excuse for not knowing a bit about a prospective employer
- network - find older people in IT and get to know them, ask questions, LISTEN TO THE ANSWERS - most of us try to help out the younger guys and get them in the industry but you have to show some interest in our knowledge and not try and appear uber leet to us - we dont care a bit about a web page you and your crew hacked, or the virus you wrote or your frag count, we like people who want to learn about corporate IT and how to deal with it. (ps if you dont like dealing with people and taking phone calls then forget IT and find another industry - no matter how good you are your first roles will be lower level - helpdesk or desktop support and these are customer contact areas)
- Stick at it - turn up to work on time, do your job, work what hours are needed and learn what you can.
- Resume - clean, clear, consice and up to date - no fluff, simple descriptions and a list of skills and realistic ratings on those skills (ie: excellent knowledge, good knowledge, working knowledge, exposure to) no fluff and a few good references will get you in the interview room - from that point its up to you.
How to find work is hard for anyone - the industry is in a slump and people arent hiring as much - what i and most people i know look for are people with broad skill ranges - they know both Linux and Windows and a range of applications, they have some hardware knowledge and basic networking skills and are willing to learn.
My best advice is look in the papers and on the web and think about the contracting companies and headhunters very carefully before you use them (in Aus these companies cannot charge the appicant for their services - not sure how it is in the US) these guys will lie to you, steal from you and can make or break your reputation.
Hope this helps some people (forgive my spelling OK)
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
For somebody who likes to bash mass media - you sure love to cater to their stereotypes of the internet today dont you? I mean most 15 year olds on the net are either sitting on AOL (some on
The Net does not cause this. Children have always been this way to a certain extent (as our society gets more liberal - the children become more uncontrollable it seems). For you to simply point the finger at the internet and say "thats why" all while assuming that this is the product of some deviant open source, copyright infringing lifestyle - is fickle to say the least. And yes that if anything would be the deviant lifestyle. You seem live under this wonderful assumption that all children today have access to computers and all of the kids are up and coming computer scientists willing to work for free. Bullshit.
Jon - come back to earth. The Net is not life. Life is not the Net. Perhaps you should begin writing fictional stories (some might argue that you do already) instead of editorializing. I believe you might find more acceptance on that platform. The fact is most kids online just sit around and IM their buddies on AOL or yahoo all day long. Some look for MP3s. Some check email. Most of them are not future Fortune 500 CEOs.
Get back in touch man.
Gam
"Flame at Will"
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
I appreciate Jon's attempt at trying to see weaknesses and strengths in different segments of the population, but frainkly, I think he has missed the mark completely.
I think all we can say is that young people have much more potential for learning new things than older people. But is this news? I mean come on... how old is the saying "You can't teach an old dog new tricks?"
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I agree with you - but IN GENERAL, it is my belief that the teen culture, as a whole - and with each successive generation, thinks that somehow, it is exempted from some of the "rules". These are the rules that govern such basic traits as dignity, self-respect, honesty, motivation, humility, hard work, and mortality. These are all character issues that ultimately, will dictate what KIND of person you become. They respresent such basic human qualities that they transcend generational differences. The fifteen-year-olds that recogize this will do well...those that don't will probably be sporting superficial, if not unhappy lives.
I've grown to despise pop culture - it's social "sugar" - it might be sweet to the taste, but there's little if any value for the human soul. I'm amazed at the way young kids try so hard to be like people other than who they are - usually by dressing a certain way, acting a certain way, etc. Many of them have become consumeristic droids that feel like they have to buy (and buy into) whatever crap is thrown their way by the corporate marketing machine. All of this nonsense is distracting them from the one thing that that will, ultimately, provide them with one of life's holy grails: a sense of inner peace and contentment. The irony here is that it is at this stage of life (being 15), that some of the most important decisions are made with respect to how easily (or even whether) they will find their way down this path.
On the other hand, I'm glad to see you only need to know "a bit" about a subject to write a book about it.
In light of that, I think we've done a poor job of preparing our children for what to expect. I'm not talking about controlling teenage egos. History has shown that's an impossible feat. Even God couldn't prevent Adam + Eve from taking a bite. What I mean is that kids have a tough time adapting to the idea that the entire world isn't centered on them. I'm still young though, perhaps that's the way it's always seemed.
Humorless sig goes here.
And as the article from which this list is derived, this training should begin at home. Perhaps one of the problems is, we just toss the kid in front of the computer to learn, the same as we toss them in front of the TV to babysit ?
One other thing, and it is the one thing a computer cannot teach (though it can be a source of) ... how to deal with life's hard knocks, including failure, guilt, sickness, disappointment and death.
And it is in that above category, I have no problems getting the attention of the teenagers I work with.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
My first job was at McDonalds, and it most certainly will help me down the road, though it won't be on my resume. I learned nothing about the job market or the workplace in general - rather, I learned how far you could push your boss before you got fired. If you can't work up the contacts to get a 'tech job' like you want part-time, then at least get something better than the service industry - those jobs are for the people in your classes who are pushing through with C- averages. At least work something real; I did construction at 16 and processing in a meat plant at 17 before I did tech support (@17). McDonalds is a fantasy-land extension of your education: they'll try and pound the same inflexible robot-programming into you that you probably have got at school (unless you lucked out and hit some good teachers) when what you need is a dynamic job that excercises thought - assembly line work at the local burger joint will just indoctrinate you into the hive-mind with everyone else.
-----
I am 15 years of age. My hobbies include computing, authoring electronic music, playing guitar (7 years experience), philosophy, amateur physics study. What else do I do with my time that might be of a typical teenager? I do drugs and go to concerts. The resources for a young person to get ahead of their age are there on the internet today. Too many lack the insight of putting them to use. It began with programming BASIC on an Apple IIGS. I was never into the dial-up BBS, though my brother was. Soon I got a 486 with Windows 3.1, and moved up from there. My internet access began with AOL (I was briefly involved in the early "progz" community). In 1996 I discovered IRC and posed as a teenager in various communities (which worked quite well). I got cable in 1997 and by this time was experienced in VB and often using shells. In '98 I began trying out many GNU/Linux distributions with no success for a year. I still use Windows primarily and administrate a FreeBSD server. Now I have intermediate skills in C++, PERL and many aspects of CGI web applications. Only on rare accounts have I observed peers with high intelligence and experience. I feel like the upper quarter (culturally, intellectually and experientially) of our generation lacks the interest to delve into IT businesses. Furthermore I have not encountered an outlet to put my skills at work. It is likely that I will only be hired once I have proper educational qualifications. Essentially I don't think this technological generation has any advantage over the one of the 1980s. We can make "advancements" but still stay the same. If anything at all, a real bright quality that could be discerned is the intuitive ability to figure things out for oneself. This is one thing my generation was largely required to do in the area of computers. In the end I don't have a /. acct, so that is my ultimate downfall.
is my view abit askew because the youths I work with are blessed with good parents ?
Or are more parents like those in your situation, where your parents "were wrong about just about everything" ?
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
Whether it is computers, sex, drugs, food, driving or whatever, everyone has to eventually pay the piper. This can be negative or positive. I think any lesson can be a constructive one, so let them kids fool around on the net. Hopefully they are being properly parented to adapt and adjust enough without being burned (i.e. knowing their limits) and can learn from it ALL. Hehehe, kids have probably been saying they where smarter than everyone else in history since history itself began. The sooner they realize that they can use logic and reason to accept reality while still applying their idealism to help shape that reality (without thinking that will alone is everything) they will be hardworking and dependable people.
Wisdom is following the light of enlightenment and eventually finding it is yourself years down the road trying to guide you AWAY from it. The real problem is when parents underestimate their children... it is also when the child underestimates his elders. Since our culture has not ethic if respect for one self, others or the past, our kids see this and rebel against it thus destroying it even more. Poor bastards live in total confusion, and want to get out of that (or avoid it at all costs). So next time you have a kid ask you why that black man on CNN is saying that he is owed something because of the color of his skin and that whites are 'blue eyed devils', then turns around and claims that racism and hatred are evil... what do you tell him? How do you teach him to respect others... ALL others and not just the ones that he likes? How do you tell him that hypocricy is more common than air?
I know a bit about geeky 15-year-olds; I've written a book
As I recall, didn't the Slashdot audience write most of the content for that book?
I'm no longer a teenager (well I could be a 15 year old with a decade of experience) but I "came of age" during the BBS era and I thought that the ammounts of information available to me were astounding, phone specs, bomb making, hacking, phreaking, and sweet sweet porn. Now that the information age has come of age, I feel that there is nothing I can't figure out with the help of a net connection. I could build a house, a business, I could write a book, or frag people I've never seen before. I can't imagine what this would do to some one ten years younger than me who sees his parents as pigeon-holed in their careers. The cynical sneers of their parents must look like an ignorant abomination to their wide eyed wonderment of the sheer number of possibilities. If there is anything a 15 year old should try to learn from their elders, I would say it's "emotional intelligence". Parent's aren't useless, but they can, despite their good intentions, be harmful...
Jeez, after all this time, Katz still misses the point about opensource. Explaining it yet again is redundant and demeaning, but I guess I'll have to:
The measure of opensource success is not revenue, it's how many people are using it, and thereby saving money, as well as having a reliable system they can change. Furthermore, opensource makes it cheaper to develop software. For example, I'm working on something that needs a text editor with rather unique features. Not knowing how to write a text editor, if I were a commercial software company I would have to either (a) hire someone who did know, or (2) buy an editor component that comes with sourcecode. Of course if that particular sourcecode weren't well suited for the modifications I want, I'd have to buy another one.
Instead, I downloaded the source for a few text editors, kicked back with the printed pages and a pen, and figured out how they work. No problem.
Knowledge multiplies when it's shared. Everybody thinks in terms of capitalism, but the proper approach is science, which has been at least as successful as capitalism, and has always emphasized the sharing of knowledge.
i find it quite odd that, at this point, a jon katz article has produced only two >3 rated funny replies. come on people, we're way behind schedual here! eep, -1 flamebait
tourettes
Part I drew mainly on Michael Lewis's recent book and (like Lewis) made a bunch provocative claims on the basis of very slim evidence indeed. "Are 15 year olds running the world?" "Is this a revolution?" The main problem with the article is that every time Katz makes one of these assertions, he provides no real evidence for it, backs away from its implications, or both. This happens from sentence to sentence, eg: "The idea the anybody can become an instant expert in any context is pretty creepy... [But] expertise isn't power." It's all bait and no fish.
This installment waters down the "15 yr olds running the world" hook even more, to the point where the evil young geniuses of the first article now look like... well, like smart but disaffected and often self-absorbed teenagers with no real power, although a few of them might have the ability to cause people a lot of headaches. Is this really that insightful? Or new?
Beyond that, there are new contradictions in this episode. On the one hand, we're told that "The first generation of computer kids is now running the tech world, and they've been universally sobered by the realities of economics and politics." Fair enough. On the other hand, "the world has sometimes made [the 15 year old kids] technological orphans, abandoned them to sophisticated machinery that few adults bother to comprehend." Well, which is it? The first generation of computer kids ("now running the tech world") are in their '40s or even '50s! Many have teenage children! If there's been a revolution in information technology, then the first generation of computer kids (now heading for middle-age) presumably understand computers. If "few adults" understand computers, then where'd the first generation of computer kids go?
Sure, many parents don't know anything about computers and some 15 year olds are l337. But what follows? Very little, unless you want to rely on a lot of generational stereotypes and equivocation to make the argument go through.
This is profound ... how? When I was 15 I didn't have Internet access. I was still many of the good and bad things listed above and I can bet that 15 year olds for many decades if not centuries could be akin to this description. For once Jon is right. 15 year olds are arrogant. The reason that they are arrogant on the Internet is because they grew up with it. Oh well simple minds, simple concepts. At least Jon is dead on with this article, he's just stating the obvious :)
The Anti-Blog
If you reread the Katz post you will notice that he actually refrained from lumping all 15 year olds into the same boat. He did state that while some of them are into the hostility and posturing that gives them a sense of superiority, he also mentioned that some refrain from such acts.
I work in computer sales and I see many diferent people from all walks of life. I can agree with you about how that statement can refer to some older people.
For instance there are these two punks that are near my age that come in every once in a while. They believe that they know everything and everyone else is just not worth their time. They are abrasive, rude and generally dificult to talk with.
A very wise man told me recently that a truly inteligent man knows what he doesn't know. Basically, all that means is that you can learn something new every day, there will always be someone that knows more about something than you do.
--
.sig seperator
--
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Whoa! Mod this up, please.
:)
This is possibly the most TRUE thing i've read on Slashdot this week. It's amazing to find gems like this in between Grits and Natalie Portman posts.
I am 16 right now, and even now I can see how comparatively stupid I was when I was 15.
For the record, I have never really bought into the consumerism be-like-everyone-else thing. I don't wear brand-name clothes. Lately, i've been wearing old rock-n-roll and radio station t-shirts. They're comfortable, and I like what they say.
It has perplexed me that 500 people in my school can walk around every day, and not realize at all that they're a living advertisement for Gap, or Hilfiger, or whatever brand is popular at the moment.
I personally recognize those character issues that you speak of. Although I have a mental block towards doing unpleasant things, i'm working on it. And I can see every day just how bad most teenagers are, just as you say - and I'm afraid that it's only going to get worse.
These "fifteen year olds" are simply a nose in the air term for people lesser than we. There are stupid people of all ages, and there are an incredible number of 15yolds who are incredibly intelligent and resourceful. To typify the young as being stupid and out of control is itself stupid and arrogant and sadly been going on for a looooong time..
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
I was at band camp and....
-nd
I was just about to use the same quote to shore up my argument about how Katz is a pud.
They tend to confuse hostility with communication. When I was fifteen I thought everyone was out to get me, and that I was way smarter than everyone I knew, and responded in kind. That's what kids at fifteen do.
they shoot (or type) before they think. Jesus Christ! A teenager doing something without thinking? What is the world coming to? Once, I nearly ran over a neighbor kid with my mini-bike. I thought I was having a laugh, until the kid's father threatened to kill me. Oh, jeez, maybe I shouldn't have done that!
They can be arrogant and posturing as well as creative and energetic. Who would think such a thing could happen, during the years when education finally steps up to occasionally challenge you?
They are sometimes narcissistic: they fixate on "me" media, blocking and filtering people and ideas they don't like or agree with. God knows when I was a kid, the last thing I wanted were things that catered and marketed to my life and my outlook.
Just exactly what is Katz saying about the "Net-connected 15-year-olds" that couldn't be said about "Offline 15-year-olds" or for that matter, "15-year-olds who like Knight Rider, Scooby Doo, and BMXing?"
In all honesty, I've never found a better example of someone who just likes to see his words appear on a website.
"Upgrade your grey matter, 'cause one day it may matter." --Deltron Zero
no, no, no... attack of the 15 year-old clones.
Next, you scrounge up some people that have written, talked about, or otherwise blasted the subject you have at hand. Try to come up with experts that agree with your basic opinion on the matter, or at least, the opinion you are going to use to stroke your audience. Barring that, twist the words of your chosen sources to fit your needs. Make sure, whatever you do, that you always write out what you THINK your audience wants to hear. You may be wrong, but dive into it head-first, and hold fast to your belief throughout your article. Even if you don't actually believe what you are writing, it is important to have the appearance that you truly believe you have it all figured out.
Start your article with a statement of fact so blatantly obvious that a two year old would recognize it as complete and utter tripe. Then, expand on that bit of fact until you have twisted the original meaning so out of shape that no one, not even yourself, can extricate the actualy original meaning of the statement from the quagmire of your opinion. Most importantly, make sure that you go out of your way to state your opinion as if it was the one and only possible factual account of your given subject. Point out that you are the authority on this particular subject, because you once played a video game in 1983 that you thought might have the potential to enlighten you on this subject. Then, finish your article with a restatement of the original fact that you started with, but with an "enhancement" that re-inforces your opinion (which you have stated repeatedly as a fact). When the situation warrants, end with a final question that calls into the minds of your readers the fact that you are utterly and completely clueless, and should probably be recieving shock treatment in the basement of some state-owned hospital.
If this doesn't work, then simply re-read any Katz article and attempt to emulate it. They are all the same, just with slightly different words. Your main goal should be to stroke the egos of your audience, while at the same time somehow alienating them by making them feel like ethical midgets. Thank you.
Stupidity never felt so good.
And thank {your favorite diety here} for that!
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
Some crazy people night think that the people who actually designed the protocols that are used on the "net" *might* know the "inner workings" a little better than 15 year olds.
WARNING:: Old Fart Recolection
Back in the dark recesses of time (1979) this 15year old wiz kid was playing with his Sinclair ZX81, and then 2 years later the good ole TSR80. Playing games (remember Asylum "DON'T LOOK UP") and programming the ole Z80, these activities were totally mistifing to the average Joe Person back then and probably even today.
Then came the good ole days of the bulletin board, where the staggering baud rates of 300 were reached, and continued to grow to the famed 9600 mark (remember this was the supposed limits of copper communications). And on and on we go...
My point being that there was and always will be 15 year old wiz kids that come up through the ranks that make us go (old foggy voice) wow them youngster sure are smart (/old foggy voice), what truely amazes me is the depth of knowledge and with each new generation. And as always the general public just don't get it, or don't understand exactly what it is all about.
Oz canetoad
P.S. some of the comments about KRATZ's facination with 15 years olds, are truely those of a 15 year old.
I think Katz is under the delusion that he is living in a movie or something. Rise of the 15 year olds!
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
I bought him his fist machine when he was about 8 years old. When he was 9 he got himself into a little bit of "trouble" online. the appropriate authority figures threw a good scare into him and he's stayed out of trouble (so far as we know) ever since. I've probably spent between 8,000 and 10,000 dollars on his hardware and software. there have been times when I was worried that the computer would be his ruin, but in the end, I know I did the right thing. he's way ahead of the game when it comes time to earn his own living. My evening job is freelance technical writer. My son is doing technical edits for me before I submit the manuscripts to the publisher for further editing.
I'm damn proud of him. His social skills are improving, occasionally I can even drag him away from the computer for a day of fly fishing, or driving lessons (he swears he'll never buy a car with a clutch!). Overall he's turning out to be a positive contributing member of society. In the end, that's really what matters.
Forget anime and comix those are so gay!! But nothing gets me harder than stories of 15 year olds!
That sounds like you're either very unlucky, or not using your resume to best effect. I've been through this process, and I now see how the hiring process works from the point of view of the small software house where I work. Perhaps these few tips will help you out.
At the end of the day, looking at 16 year olds is a risk for most IT companies. Different employment rules may apply, you probably have no proven track record, and most 16 year olds won't be as good as most 21 year olds. If you're the exception, you have to prove it to them, but first you have to stand out from the crowd by writing a good resume and supporting docs.
There are some good web sites out there to help with this, but many bad ones, too. Most agencies and "CV writing services", at least in the UK, suck. Take everyting you read on-line with a healthy pinch of salt, and always get your resume and covering letter proofread by someone informed -- a careers adviser, a friend who works in recruitment, someone like that. It's amazing the difference they can make.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
...and no adult wants to listen to a teenager complain about how bad it is at school, because they've been working and bitter for so long that they idealize their youth. So the kids have nowhere to turn but to each other, or online.
Both of these are a crapshoot in terms of whether they're good for kids. Occasionally you get an Eric Harris who is persecuted by the kids around him so he goes online, and finds that the neo-Nazis online like him and listen to him, and give him a solution. Then kids shoot up their schools, and the internet gets blamed, when it's really the inattentive parents and their co-workers asshole kids that pushed them to it.
It's enough to make a person join a militia..
Exactly! I believe we need to bring back the concept of `senior', and not just as `matinee prices at the evening showing'. There are people who I respect because they have something to teach me---not some automatic prestige that gray hairs and potbellies imbue their owners with.
Yes, age can cause one to give the benefit of the doubt. But I know several adults who are, frankly, useless, irresponsible infants who just happen to be over forty.
Yes, experience is the greatest teacher. But that doesn't mean that everyone older than me has it. And, of course, age says absolutely nothing about raw talent.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I await further input.
State of Love and Trust
> The Net fosters a "Hey, I can do this, too"
> value system.
Computers in general give kids a feeling of power and ability they might not feel elsewhere. I was that 15yr. old geek reading "Byte" (the one good computer tech magazine) in study hall. But since my dad worked at an engineering firm and nobody there knew how to code, I was hired.
Somebody else said they haven't met a project manager under 40 that's any good...well, I'm tired of "I've been doing this for twenty years, so I know what I'm doing." Give me a REAL, rational reason for what you're doing, instead of claiming experience. I've been doing this for almost twenty years, too.
OK, let me make sure everyone knows that 14 years old making $800k and 15 year olds giving copious legal advice is the exception. For all of this anectdotal evidence (both from Katz and Lewis) there is little empirical evidence related to the social phenomena in question.
Lewis (and Katz) look at the extraordinary qualities of these cases and talk about the net's effect to avoid having to look at the ethics involved in these situations. Marcus Arnold misrepresented himself, plainly and simply. Lebed used spam to play the stock market. Is there something going on here? Yes, society has not caught up to the net to say "hey, this is wrong and here is why."
Whatever is going on here (and there is something), it does not seem that anectdotal evidence from biased sources is going to explain it.
Troll Like a Champion Today
I was talking with a multiethnic group of people a couple of years ago (we were all around 19 or 20), and an Indian friend of mine made a comment to that same effect. An American guy in the group made an interesting point: maybe people in the east respect their elders because they feel they have received something precious from them. And maybe we feel like all our grandparents have to offer us is hate and ignorance. The obvious counter to that is that eastern cultures do a great job of killing each other too, but I think he was on to something, and the references to martial arts in this thread seem to go along with that.
When I got through my impetuous teenage years, I realized that when it came to buying a car or going to a job interview, my parents were genuinely smarter than me and I'd do well to swallow my pride and take their advice. But I'm realizing more and more that when it comes to friendships, love, and trying to make the world a better place, they really aren't a hell of a lot smarter than me, and haven't been since I was a teenager.
Maybe (let me stress the maybe, so you know this isn't anti-American flamebait) until we have a culture we can be truly proud of, we will never give greyhairs serious respect.
grep -ri 'should work'
I know that when I finally spawn a child, he/she won't be getting a computer until probably 6th grade.....I want my kid to take the time to just be a kid....there is something to be said for squirt gun fights, riding your bike in the summer, soccer camp etc....I have seen this happen with my friend's kids.....they get introduced to computers at an early age and it becomes their life.... I think it's kinda sad. http://www.thealterego.com/haxor/haxorjr.htm my 2 cents
I worked at a Pizza hut and a McDonalds and you are right, your first few jobs should be crappy. I had a paper route which taught me at 12 about responsibility, my friends could do whatever they wanted, but I had to deliver papers every afternoon. Then I went to Mcdonalds at 15, pizza hut at 16, then a sysadmin as part of a school coop job at 16.5 or so. Then because of the recession, I had to deliver pizza, security guard between 3pm and 11pm, then shipping and receiving at a computer rental company. Now I'm 29 and can get a good salary and a sysadmin job. A 16 year old won't be an effective sysadmin or programmer, a lot of the time you have to travel and can't at 16. You can't even rent a car until 21(I think) and how can you travel on business and not rent a car? The boom is over, the 15-20 year olds don't run the show and won't...you get 1 chance, if you don't make it then...wait a few years.
computer dumb - when the term computer is added to a phrase the listener immediately loses brain functions. eg -
SA::Hey user, turn off your computer monitor at night.
USER::How do I do that?
SA::With the on off switch.
USER::Where's that?
Jon has basically told us that teens don't think things through, are arrogant, and have large gaps in their knowledge. Oh and by the way this all started around the same time as the Timex Sinclair (83-84?)because before that teens did not display this behavior.
Jon just added computer dumb to his already vast catalog of dumb.
I especially like where he decides that "first generation of computer kids" is running the technology world. No they're not. They got some press. Many didn't get any press and went away as fast as those who did. Bill & Co. are still running the show. (Sun, Cisco, NS, etc)
Jon, like his 15 year olds, has written (posted) before he thought things through.
(Note to self block this dope's articles)
This
HE seems awfully concerned with 15 yer olds "Rising". I thnk John need to stop looking at those porno spams he keeps getting.
And, for the record, if I had a choice between my kid being a packet sniffer or a doper, I'd choose the sniffer every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Yes, it's illegal, but at least he's not killing brain cells in the process.
>> written a book
sure, and I know a bit about quantum physics; I've doodled on the back of my science notebook.
People must command respect. They can't just expect people (even kids) to respect them simply because they're older. Many seem to have forgotten this basic truth of our instinctive culture.
None of the faculty from my old high school could get this through their heads no matter now many times I explained it. They would ask me why I didn't 'respect' my teachers, and when I replied that they hadn't done anything to earn my respect the shocked look I got back said a lot about what was going through my principals head at the time. Apparently young people are expected to respect the old simply for being old, that's just ludicrous. I respect my grandparents and my parents because they have seen and done things I haven't and can give me insight into how the world works that I haven't yet obtained for myself. My teachers were for the most part bitter, ignorant, and unwilling to accept anything that wasn't in their teachers guide. There were a few shining exceptions to this rule, as there always are.
But really, I can completely understand why teenagers have no respect for teachers and a lot of other older people, especially of the 25-35 range, a lot of that age group hasn't really done anything with their lives except work... And no one wants to hear someone bitch about how all they ever do is work...
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Somebody needs to start tapping these 15 year olds for executive positions. It'll be the biggest money saving strategy since firing all your American workers and opening up shop in Mexico.
What acrock. I bet Britney Spears doesn't get a couple of hundred e-mails a day. With every article Katz shows himself to be more and more drunk with his own self-importance than I ever dreamed anyone could be. Katz, here's a bit of information that you may find useful: those emails about extending your penis and learning how to make $10000 a day are NOT NECESSARILY WRITTEN BY 15-YEAR OLDS.
are really federal agents in disguise, Jon.
...
Man, must have struck a nerve last time, he's getting all defensive about his street creds
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Hey, son, you're out of your fucking mind. Anyone that hires a 16 year old is smokin' rocks, and upper management probably got their MBA's from university of phoenix or some shit. People make a living off this tech shit, support families, etc. etc. etc. Stick to riding skateboards, flipping burgers, and hack around in your spare time. The most you could ever get at that age is technical support at some small fry mom + pop operation, which are rapidly dissolving into larger corporations. Stick to riding skateboards, getting drunk, and fucking high school hoes.
There is a major lack of respect towards children & teenagers in English-speaking countries like Britiain & the US. They are capible of so much more, and they are people too, no matter how much they may be classified as being little more advanced than a pet dog.
Ehh, not particularly middle-class anymore. My family was never that well off, but my father got into the whole PC thing very early on.
But even that doesn't matter nowadays. Public libraries provide free net access (which absolutely **rules**. And some fools thought that they were going to become irrelevant...) and most schools have labs in them.
Of course, the most cynical among us would say that poor kids can only make a difference the way they always, have, through senseless acts of violence that would make Beat Takeshi cringe.
The *real* problem can be seen if you log on to, say, Bolt.com's message boards. Bleah. Makes Slashdot look like some kind of academic colloquium. They act like... kids! Something Katz would never suspect.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Most adults today have the perception that it's ok to just be a member of society, work, save, have a family, and die, and that's it! They don't think about the fact that they have a chance to really gain some profound knowledge during their lifetime, and pass it on to others... They don't have a concept of the "Elder", because most of them didn't have anyone like that to guide them.
Does anyone realize that this is precisely the problem with our schools today? Why don't kids respect teachers or other adults? It's not really because they don't understand technology or the latest game. It's because they don't have any profound knowledge to pass on. They're not wise. They don't have the self-confidence of a proud grandfather, so kids don't feel any reason to respect them.
Some of this has become clear to me through my practice of martial arts -- my teacher is truly wise, and his son respects him, not because he's his father, but because he knows so much, and knows he knows it ;) He is a shining example of the wise old man, and he can beat the crap out of any frat-boy football player in his prime...
People must command respect. They can't just expect people (even kids) to respect them simply because they're older. Many seem to have forgotten this basic truth of our instinctive culture.
Once again, John Katz continues to exploit and over-glorify so-called "geeks" and "geek teens". After this and another recent article of his I read in Shift, I'm convinced that Katz's opportunism has truly peaked.
Here are some realities that Katz needs to grasp:
-The grand majority of "geeks" he is placing on a pedestal are merely antisocial teens who play too much Quake and spend most their time in UNIX changing their window managers. I know this because I was a wise-cracking teenaged "UNIX geek" only a few years ago.
-The most knowledgeable (sp?), clever, annd innovative computer people out there are the same people who are married with children; the normal men and women who don't get a great deal of attention in the media. This is mainly because "computer smarts" comes mainly from knowledge built from years of experience, not any kind of magical teenaged link to the wonders of bits and bytes. Anyone with both an academic and production backgroun in software will confirm this.
Please, Katz, realize the above points and move on. A couple articles a couple years ago was OK, but you've been milking this for far too long. Just move on and find some other subculture you can leech on; at the very least teen geeks arent even worth it.
I know some 15-year-olds-wannabees... most of them are script kiddies. They don't know much about technology. They make dumb programs...
When I was 15 I was also a wannabe, programing away in pascal and basic, sometimes in ASM, and thinking I really understood a lot about computers.
Of course 10 years latter, now working in the core network of an ISP, I realize how stupid I was, and how ignorant I was...
You cannot proceed from the informal to formal by formal means
You just gotta rub it in and torture us, don't you? Yeah, just in case you were succesful in ignoring his first barrage of mindless ditherings, there's a link back to it thoughtfully provided...
Note: I didn't copy the link into the above quote. It's OK! You don't have to click on it!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Katz you've outdone yourself.
Twenty-five years ago a guy I went to school with called one HP computer on the local school modem, had it call another computer and then had them both take each other down. He did it with Basic and he did it in such a way as to cause HP to send a maintenance rep out to figure out what happened to their machines.
When you got a machine twenty-five years ago you had to put it together chip by chip. There weren't any Apples. If you were a kid and you were playing around with this stuff, and I was, you learned to program in machine code because that was the only thing available (I sucked at it but my Dad was a genious).
Ever since the dawn of the computer age intelligent children have been using machines to do things that older people never invisioned. I've seen stories every year for the past twenty years about how this kid or that kid has just done something truly astounding with his computer. The thing is, its rare. I don't mean rare like a quarter landing on its edge during a flip. I mean really, really rare that you get a kid, or even an adult for that matter, that does something so totally astounding that everybody else around him looks and says "Gee, look how much smarter kids are these days."
What isn't reported is that now there is so much drivel, so much crap on the web, that you have to be a genious just to wade through it all. It doesn't take a genious to visit slashdot and talk tough about hacking some web site. Anybody and his brother can do that.
From my perspective the difference between nerd kids today and nerd kids twenty years ago is that today's generation has never thought about what it would take to actually build a computer from scratch. It would never cross their mind. This isn't good or bad. It's just different.
On the other hand, it is my belief that kids today have much less of a real clue about how the world works than they did twenty years ago. Twenty years ago if you wanted to really get involved in the process you had to get your butt out the door and put it to some use. Now you can convince yourself that you are involved just by writing about the injustice of it all on a Slashdot web site.
Beware the wood elf!!!
Here's my point: Before this "digital revolution", do you think that 15-year-olds were just happy people who only pulled girl's hair? Of course not. They broke windows (like taking down web servers). They spraypainted walls (like defacing websites). They shoplifted (like negating copyright). The fact that they're doing it online now and in a virtual world does not negate the fact that they've been doing this for YEARS.
What, do you think that those kids weren't prosecuted back then? Of course they were. And don't tell me that real-world crime has lighter ramifications; I think it's the other way around. Get caught cracking somebody's computer, get your computer use restricted for a couple of years and put on probation. Get caught breaking a window, and you pay for the window. Which would you rather have?
If I were in charge 0f hiring and this 16-year 0ld came in applying for a pr0fessi0nal p0siti0n, competing against degreed IT pe0ple... I might have t0 pass 0n him/her als0.
I'm turning 16 in under a week, but I've been visiting slashdot for a very long time now. I'm not your average 15 year old, and if theres a third article, I'll go into more detail on that one, HOWEVER, I was wondering:
:)
[This is after reading many comments on both articles.]
Why are adults so bias against Teenagers? I see a LARGE number of comments where the phrase or quote: "...well they're 15 so..." "...and teenagers are just like that...." etc etc..
I'm almost 100% sure you get my point. [Unfortunately there are "slow" people in all age groups.] Anyway, If you could explain Why I've seen many comments from various age groups bashing teenagers so openly, I would appreciate it.
Anonymous Coward, "He who does not need a login."
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
Funny, it was this same Margaret Mead who was a precocious 20- or 24-year-old writing and doing research that would be valuable for ages. Just goes to show you, self-reference ain't always as perceptive as alter-reference.
Uh, Katz, don't you mean you COPIED and PASTED a book (from a Slashdot thread) about them?
m00.
i agree... katz's essays are too vague.. you can analyse his sentances.. and what do you get... just common sense . some of his points i agree with.. however, he is kinda saying that 15 year-olds need to listen to the older generation.. and at the same time his article.. as well as comments for his articles.. are saying that 15year olds have no really knowledge and they are a nuisance... doesnt make sense to me
although I didagree with katz, I think the one thing that should not got forgotten about todays 15 year old is data. They can get information far quicker then a 15 year old could have gotten it 15 years ago. Have 15y.o. changed? no, but they can learn a whole lot more.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Am I missing something here, or is it only possible to become net and tech savy if you are 15? Do these young folks get served up their Time Lines at a different bandwidth than us older folks?
Knowledge is power. Most of us can agree with that. If someone 15 years younger goes out and achieves that power while you sit back and complain that they are taking over rather than doing so yourself, why is there anyone to blame but yourself again?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
This article makes pipsqueak teenagers sound like rebel leaders! I worked in a high school computer lab for 2 years. The verdict: teenagers today are just like I was; immature, restless, pains-in-the-ass. The "computer classes" were filled with little delinquents who the administration assumed were intelligent because they could remotely dump stupid messages on another kid's console. They're not out there changing the world with code, they're dropping pencils and peeking under Miss Sander's skirt; except it's not a skirt, it's some poorly defended corporate site and the pencil is a script they downloaded from wannabehacker.org The underlying problem is the myth that the hacker community continues to perpetuate about what they represent. Writing virii only pisses people off and alienates the author. Stop posting scripts for the kiddies and help streamline the Linux kernel. Do something that'll really turn Corporate State America upside-down.
Exactly! Just because they know something their parents don't, doesn't mean it's useful.
And I can't tell you how infuriating it is every time I hear someone declare themselves l33t simply because they found more Jenna Jameson porn on the SMB network, or kick ass at Half-Life, or anything that doesn't require any significant self-education at all. It's sad; if more people wanted to learn this sort of thing, it's easier than ever, but a lot of folks just don't want to dig deeper into the mystery.
The scary part isn't how many kids become hackers, it's how many don't.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
They can be arrogant and posturing
Alot of 15 years old are arrogant and posturing because they are 15 years old. Now the things you are speaking about is very common when ever they is a great social shift in ideals the younger generation get caught up in the shift. This is nothing new the 15 of this generation will be saying the same thing of the 15 years old of the next.
Have fun
I know a bit about my friends; I have a blue car and a number of them do too. I get a couple of hundred e-mails from them daily. They have time, energy and particular physical and mental skills for gaming, developing software and working on cars. They are smart, creative, and know the inner workings of their cars and engines better than anyone else I know. They do, in fact, have access to unprecedentel amounts of information. Few parents, slashdotters or anyone else have any clear idea of what my friends are doing with their cars, or really care at all.
Something tells me now would be a good time to stop....
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
my brother is exactly the same hehe :)
Maybe Katz is hoping for the rise of 15-year olds on the internet so that Slashdot readers will finally be impressed with his movie reviews and other serious articles.
well, 2 things.
too many 15 yr olds have access to broadband conections, and
too many clueless baby boomers now have unprotected computers with broadband connections turned on all day long.
sick and tired of gettin' DoS'd from @home users' computers and such.
The tendency of geeks to be narrowly educated, self-serving, smug, and intolerant effectively relegates them to the margins of society. Their technical knowledge is impressive, but from a political/change-the-world standpoint, it is about as useful as knowing the names of all of the Pokemon. If you want to change the world - even a little - you have to be able to engage in intelligent, educated debate. This is a social skill that comes with education and - yes - age.
Margaret Mead wrote years ago that the pace of cultural change in the West was accelerating so rapidly that the young were coming to believe they had nothing to learn from their elders. And that was before the Net. Her prediction has been fulfilled, more than even she imagined.
There is a long held stigma that teenagers have no respect for their elders, teenagers think they're invincible, teenagers know everything...the list goes on. Not that it doesn't have some truth, but the fact is, this idea has been around long before everyone flooded the net.
The net isn't making kids any more disrespectful of their elders, or any more invincible, or any more knowledgable. It is, however, making them more of a presence. 30 years ago the geek in the corner was the geek in the corner. Now the geek in the corner has met up with hundreds of others.
It's quite possible that this isn't such a negative thing -- for every obnoxious, annoying kid on the net there's another one who is getting a lot of support from it.
It's just easier to focus on the troublemakers -- they're the ones that want to be noticed anyway. But to say that the net made them that way isn't really correct. It just made them more obvious.
I am almost 19 years old now, I'm a web programmer in the state of texas and I would consider myself highly skilled, especially being self taught. However, I look at my niece and nephew who are being taught to use a computer in preschool and spanish in kindergarten and I fear for my own validity in the future. Will I become obsolete? I didn't use a computer until I was at least 12 and that was an apple 2e and then a 386 which I had until I was 15. I took High School spanish which consisted of watching the Lion King in espanol. I know this feeling is timeless, anyone else with any thoughts?
Are hiring. Youre not going to get much else as a 16-year old unless a parent or someone else you know hooks you up. Companies do not hire summer workers and after-school part-timers into career-type positions.
The fact is, your first job is not going to help you down the road. Its very rare that it will be on your resume. You learn about the job market and workplace in general. You develop a work ethic and learn to appreciate the value of the money you do earn. Its supposed to be a type of real-world extension of your education.
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
The reality isn't so much that kids are taking over the world, but that the world has sometimes made them technological orphans, abandoned them to sophisticated machinery that few adults bother to comprehend.
The same can be said for any interest a teen has, and the peer group that surrounds that interest. This is part of being a teenager. They haven't been orphaned to technology (or sophisticated machinery), so much as orphaned (or abandoned as you say) to puberty. Teens are angry because they're awkward, misunderstood, touchy, and frustrated by their lack of control or freedom. Music can be just as much of an escape as technology, and fewer adults attempt to comprehend The Sonic Death Monkeys, than try to understand computers.
Andrew
Wow, did this come from another 15 year old with too much brain for his maturity?
But not enough. The most important thing to learn is that they are just as diverse as adults are. The next most important thing to learn is that they are not that different from adults, and have many of the same faults.
They tend to confuse hostility with communication
That sounds very much like adults.
They have profound, impressive grounding in technology, gaming and software, but big blank spots in many other areas of knowledge, including history, politics, mainstream culture
Some do. And some are profoundly ignorant of matters technological while knowing astounding amounts about, e.g., History. Just like adults.
Margaret Mead wrote years ago that the pace of cultural change in the West was accelerating so rapidly that the young were coming to believe they had nothing to learn from their elders. And that was before the Net. Her prediction has been fulfilled, more than even she imagined.
Yes, and 3,000 years before she ever imagined. Read some of the ancient Greek complaints about the young.
15 was great. At 15 you've got enough experience to really do stuff with computers, but you're still inexperienced enough to be thrilled at doing things for the first time.
Anyone else remember fondly the first time they got a screen to scroll? The first time they were able to access the sound card? And, of course, the first game that didn't involve pure text...
Now it's just the same old thing...<sigh> I'm a bitter old man at 21.
Last post!
I'm generally no fan of Jon Katz, but I have to applaud the following:
Except that I'd draw the line closer to 25 than 15, I couldn't have said it better myself. It's an almost perfect description of the majority here on slashdot or in the other forums Katz mentions. Web-connected young techies seem very acutely aware of how much they know, and insistent on that knowledge's importance, but startlingly (disgustingly) unaware and dismissive of all that they don't know. It's like the urge to learn is short-lived, taking them only so far before that curiosity disappears and their opinions harden into stone after only a few years. Few and far between, seemingly, are those who continue to admit the limits of their knowledge and set about making new discoveries after those first couple of years. I'm sorry, but as long as I can meet dozens of people a year who have performed and innovated at a high level for a decade or more[1], I will remain unimpressed by people with only a couple of years of less-than-stellar achievement under their belts. Enfants terribles are a dime a dozen, and their inflated sense of their own worth and importance is what brought us the dot-bomb crash.
[1] Yes, such people are also a small minority. Far more ten-year guys[2] have "one year ten times" and not ten years of continuous learning/innovation. That's kind of the point. Just about everyone has a few good years in them. The two-year guy hasn't proven he has anything more than that and, statistically, he's far more likely to fall into the "one year ten times" category, so why does he think he's so exceptional?
[2] It is pretty much just guys I'm talking about. I've known some female developers in my time, including my wife, but the patterns of performance and stagnation among them seem quite different than what we're talking about[3].
[3]Any Pratchett fans out there?
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
I know a bit about geeky 15 year olds too. I should hope so, seeing as I'm a geek, and I'm 15. Yes, we have some knowledge, and yes, we can do stuff with that knowledge that very few people around us can understand or want to. Yes, we have some growing up to do, we did not suffer a shortened childhood. We merely had an alternative one, if that. Sure, we make certain groups of adults have to think and work harder, but we're not planning on taking over the world any time soon. Check back again in a few years.
"Okay, a generalization, but a largely accurate one." puleeeese, as you say. Most teenagers do know how to operate a web browser as you say. But this discussion is about geek teens, who know more than introductory visual basic. Our high schools teach compiler theory; we laugh at the Hollywood hacker image (Me and my comrades laughed heartily while Hugh Jackman made a virus in Swordfish). Yes, many teens do use warez. But understand that most teens are too young to get hired and make some serious money. Its not like we leech cheap stuff like quake 3 as much as expensive and overpriced stuff like 3D Studio Max.
smiller-time "I have two rules: I am God, and God is infallable."
> have any clear idea what these kids are
> doing online, or just how significant
> cultures like gaming and coding have become.
I'm not so inclined as you seem to be to consider this a Bad Thing.
I know I would like to be able to see what could happen when something labeled as a "kids' thing" (secret meetings in treehouses spring to my mind) is so similar to the mainstream culture of our future. I'm curious to see what would happen if kids are left alone (and this almost always happened, one way or the other) talking and meeting over things that will actually shape our world (and this never happened, as far as I know).
I'm not sure that the "help" adults would like to provide wouldn't be more like passing them their prejudices and imagination boundaries.
> Although they consider themselves
> ferocious defenders of free speech, in
> theory, in practice many find
> differing opinions infuriating.
Maybe, but so what? There is a big difference between defending freedom of speech and agreeing with everyone. There are many opinions that I don't like at all and some of them make me want to puke, but I consider myself a defender of free speech, too. Freedom of speech is not made for protecting speech you like, it's for protecting the one you DON'T like.
I would even go as far as saying that a self-appointed advocate of free speech who violently (metaphorically speaking, of course) argues all the time is much more "wise" than those who never seriously argued with anyone.
Ciao,
Foggy
Of course, no one ever bothers asking us for our perspective...
Sorry, Jon, but you really don't know enough to write an article. How do I know this? Well, I'm 17 now. I'm probably somewhat unusual in that I actually have meaningful conversations with my parents (or my Dad, at least, who is also a computer geek) on a regular basis. Conversations that last 2-3 hours about growing up and about how your perspective can change on life are not uncommon in my house.
I know I don't understand what it's like to be "grown-up", and the reason I know that is because of these conversations. Do I "get" everything and do I understand the "real world"? Certainly not. Does anybody? I don't think so. For each person, the "real world" is a bit different. Right now, I have a view of the world which is focused around the things which are important in my life (hacking on code, college, leaving home, ...). In a few years, the things that are important will change, and so will my world view. My job will become important, and I won't have to worry about college. After that, I'll probably raise a family and have kids--again, my world view will change.
My question for the /. community is this; is it really wrong that we teenagers are the way we are? It is unarguably wrong to DDOS some company's server, crack an ISP or spread an Outlook virus, but is it really wrong at this point in our lives to be wrapped up in the computer and in the things which we find to be important right now? I don't think so, as long as we recognize that this is just one part of our lives, and as long as we are willing to move onto the next with our minds open and ready for whatever comes.
"I haven't lost my mind -- it's just backed up on tape somewhere."
That's not all we do. You say it it as if all the kids nowadays go home trying to do some packet sniffing and what not. I still truly prefer going at and getting stoned and running down the beach screaming at old people. (Off the record, one of the coolest things to do, is get a paper bag with a bottle of Coke in it (don't get actual alcohol cuz you'll prolly get arrested) and then run down the boardwalk very drunkenly screaming "SATAN LOVES YOU!" or "SATAN FUCKS ME UP THE ASS!". It's funny watching everybody slowly disappear from the park.) Anyways, as I was saying, we still do go out and cause havoc. Just cuz we're geeks doesn't we don't have a LIFE. ;)
here's the problem for you.
You're 23. You do know more than teens do, but you've still got a lot to learn. Wait. When you're 33, 43, 53... etc.
This
But people like you who just whine about how Katz is not being accurate or intuitive are worse than what you think about Katz. He averages what like 1 to 4 posts a week wheras all you amount to probably several hundred a week bashing Katz. Calm down, and read past Katz.
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
My bro is 5 and he already know how to do lots of stuff that most kids twice his age wouldn't even think about doing... Seems he's taking after me :P...
the way jon is speaking about 15 year olds, he needs to be careful. The FEDS are raiding houses as we speak arresting people.
0 _arrested_in_child_porn_probe_of_web_1.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/mcall/20010809/lo/10
repeatedly, katz and many others say that 15 year olds suffer - albeit, sometimes understandably - from not knowing enough about "reality" amd their own shortcomings in the same way that "adults" do to such an extent that it just reinforces the us vs them stereotypes on both sides. in one example katz specifically says: "One of the surreal things about being a kid, of course, is that you have no idea what you don't know or might need." ...last time i checked personally, that same statement is true not only about 15 year olds but about katz himself and everyone else in these posts. rarely in life do any of us know enough about what we dont know and might need.
many older people are very comfortable overlooking that while telling kids how much more discipline they could use in their lives or how spoiled they are, they dont very often at al apply these same criticisms to themselves first and do something in themselves to improve.
what gets under my skin so much is how spoiled, cynical, jaded, arrogant so many older people can be even as they yell at some of the best of us without checking at all if they are just trying to heal the sins of the parent by blaming the child...
because theyve experienced so much of what they think of as real life they figure very few other people at all let along younger people have anything to contribute to their lives that would significantly alter them. forget about honestly admitting that they are every bit just as much lost in their own lives and their own selves as any human being to ever grace the face of this planet or any 15 year old to ever touch a keyboard.
Much of this is true but like anything you have to take the good with the bad. My younger brother, 16, and my dad are on the net now with the PC I recently gave them. I get more questions from my dad on 'how do I do X'. My brother asks questions more like 'I learned X but where can I learn more'. While my brother is obviously learning a not from the net, he still spends some of his surfing time in teen chat rooms trying to romance some young hotty or talk sports which tells me things really aren't all that different. Despite his tech. savy, I don't see him ever using /. regularly...so he's really not that much of a geek.
---------------------- Women love me, fish fear me ----------------------
Give the "15 year olds" time, and they will have experience. What was I doing at 15? That was over half my life ago, it is hard to remember. Worrying about getting a driver's licence, if I would ever get laid, why I couldn't get all the points on the bonus levels of Galaga, how to throw a curve ball, etc.
I didn't really have a life, and now kids have one online, even though it isn't real. They'll figure it out, or they won't make it. Eventually they will have to interact with real people, and will be in for a shock. But they are willing to jump in with both feet, and by doing so make mistakes. They can learn from them, and get better, or crawl into their own little world and become outcasts.
We had the same thing, technology is just an added pressure. Does anyone care that I sucked at Defender? (not now, but I felt like a dumbass then)
Bottom line is that people still have to learn how to interact with other people, that is what our society is based on. They'll grow up, they don't have much of a choice.
--
visit http://www.poundingsand.com for cool Tshirts - check out Micropoly!
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
It seems to be the consensus of this article that with out grounding or moral guidance the geek kids will gain the power with out the wisdom to use it. I find this flawed. Yes, a wise man once said "Power corrupts, and total power corrupts totally" This is not true, For power corrupts those who do not learn from there mistakes. Those corrupted by power many times loose that power because of there corruption. Those who have power and learn from there mistakes gain a wisdom from that power. Many times that wisdom is profound and life changing. These children do not need the guidance from the adults. These kids need an environment that will allow them to explore, Learn, and grow. In the hopes that they will gain the wisdom needed to run the world of the future.
It was 10 years ago when I was 15. I ran a Renegade BBS. Worked about 25 hours a week to cover the costs of 3 additional phone lines to my parents house. 2 for the BBS, and one for my own BBS'ing habit.
:-)
Same thing then, as it was today. On my BBS I had the power, I owned it, I censored annoying posters, lavished attention and praise on those who agreed with me, and attended little coffee gatherings with the other BBS folk. Truely it was a wonderful time.
And 15 progressed into 16. I got a car, less money was spent on the BBS, more of an attempt was spent on trying to obtain a social life. But now, all of my friends were the people that I met on the BBS. Got my first real tech industry job (working at an ISP in 1995) thanks a my co-sysop being well connected with the ISP's owner.
Yea, being 15 was great but it had tradeoffs. And so is being 25 now. IRA's, health insurance, payinng rent, and car payments, etc. No wait, maybe it was a wonderful age, in a blissful time, when your greatest joy was finding a warezed copy of Doom, one a board that supported 28.8!
http://thepoliticalgeek.com/blog/ Politics for Geeks.
Thanks -Ryan, Salamander and szomb for the kind comments. I believe that the subject deserves considerably more attention than the occasional threads on Slashdot- which tend to focus on symptoms of this problem rather than the problem itself. The sad consequence of treating symptoms, in medicine as in addressing societal maladies, is that the sickness remains.
The ironic difficulty here is that many partipants in the Slashdot community are themselves unknowingly victims of the sickness of an inability to contextualize information and/or an ignorance about the indispensability of values in the life of an individual and a society. Hence, the tendency of threads about the symptoms (school shootings, etc.) to deteriorate quickly into futile but sometimes compelling arguments about first-amendment-versus-second-amendment freedoms, etc.
I hope a lot of you will give Postman's work a read. He is a brilliant, lucid social theorist- and he touches on many profound subjects in his works. It is, in my opinion, his most intriguing work.
If you find the premise of childhood's eradication to be engaging, do also help yourself to his other works.
"Technopoly" discusses the eradication of culture by technology itself. It was written in a pre-Internet age (by this I mean before the Internet had reached outside of the academic/institutional/research worlds and into all of our daily lives). Postman had no foreknowledge of the Internet's upcoming capacity to accelerate the trends he describes, so the work is feeling less like prophecy and more like history every day.
Also consider "Amusing Ourselves to Death", which discusses the corrosive effects of our modern media structure on everything from attention span, to literacy, to capacity to reason, and so forth.
All of his books will leave you with new lenses by which to view some of the more vexing of what are (currently) American societal ills. (If "Technopoly" is currect, we are currently exporting the problem to other highly developed nations and we can expect to see them experience similar societal problems within a generation or two...) You may find (as I did) that you do not agree with particular theories or concusions, but that you agree with and are edified by the broader observations and disturbed by the potential longterm societal consequences of the trends in media, education, and culture. They are ultimately, and I don't use the term loosely, "apocalyptic" in nature (in a secular sense of the word).
If you have a religious worldview (as I do), you may also find these trends to be apocalyptic in the religious sense, as well. I know I may be checking my intellectual credentials at the door with many of you by stating I am a Christian- and so be it. I say this because my own religious worldview, a filter which lenses "meaning", "purpose", "morality", "judgment", etc., is one of the means by which I contextualize the information we're discussing. And it suggests (to me) that the outcome is pre-determined and the course of mankind unchangeable- even as it is our duty (as Christians) to call others to awareness of the outcome (as well as the purpose of man, the holiness of God, the nature of sin, etc.). When you read the works of Postman in the context of the apocalyptic prophecies of Daniel (Old Testament) and Revelation (New Testament), the overlap is perfectly congruous- which is simultaneously terrifying and comforting. (I know I just lost the majority of you on this point, but what can I say? These are my beliefs.)
I know I could be 100% incorrect in my interpretation of these separate information sources (secular social theory and biblical prophecy). Nevertheless, I am grateful to have had a real childhood, to have learned how to reason, to believe in God and Christ, and to have a brain that can process information and contextualize it well enough to have confidence in my beliefs, and a hope that life may have meaning, despite the pain we experience and the senseless acts of evil we witness. And I hope for everyone who reads it, the same peace-of-mind and sense of purpose in your own lives.
... there's not a lot of computer work needed at McDonalds.
The most technical job you're going to get right now is operating a cash register. Better get used to it.
This is inspired, keep up the good work.
There are times I'm embarrassed of my fellow conservative (?) Christians (?). I'd just like to know something. Are you mocking or do you actually believe this nonsense? If you do, just don't write. I think you're wrong, and you are just making the average /. reader more hateful than they already are. Why are you here anyway?
What?
It seems to me that most of the traffic on the internet is people "studying anatomy"
As I see it, the internet has suddenly made alot of information easily available to anyone that wants to learn it..
On average, most schools suck (and arent an ideal place of education anyway IMHO) so possibly learning from the internet is a better medium for alot of children today, after all how many people can steal your money and bully you, or talk down to you and with hold information, if you are reading a series of html documents online?!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
The vast majority of americans can't find Rwanda on a map, let alone discourse knowledgeably about the factors that cause ethinic striff an genocide. Their understanding of politics and economics at any age is farcical. So why would being a geek automatically exempt one from these blindnesses?
Um, Rwanda, isn't that the place near Florida that isn't quite a state yet? I think J.Lo came from there.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
By no means am I a Microsoft fan, but let us not forget Bill Gates. While just a teenager he founded "Traf-O-Data", using a microcomputer to log traffic data. From every bio of him I've seen, he was a hard-core true hacker while a teenager, spending every spare minute dialing into whatever mainframe he could beg or steal access to.
You know, the kinds of companies that are subsidised by the taxpayers so that they don't actually have to compete against other faster moving companies?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I know a guy who used to have a paper route. It didn't teach him responsibility. It taught him only to deliver papers to the customers who complained.
Thinking about it, maybe it *did* teach him a valuable life skill.
Bah! When I was fifteen, I couldn't take pride in myself because people told me I had an ego problem, so I shut up. I'd shamble up to the front of the auditorium, shyly accept `x' award, and shuffle back down, hoping no one saw me and would think I was being big-headed for doing well at `x'.
Never occured to me that the dozen Mr Steroid contenders didn't mind constantly crowing that they were the greatest. Somehow it must have been less threatening to people.
It's taken me until now to be able to say ``I'm clever, I'm capable, and I don't have to be ashamed of it.'' I feel like some sort of Ayn Rand hero saying that, but it's true. It was always ``Shut up, Drago, no one cares what you have to say.''
I have this odd feeling that some crackhead moderator will mark this as a troll, but it's the unvarnished truth---I had the opposite of an ego problem.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Wisdom is where the value lies. How many of these kids have had to deal with last minute requirements shifts or poor user acceptence?
The REAL revolution will occur as these kids make there way into the corporate ladders. They will take all of it for granted.
I have witnessed my 15 yr old sister talk on the phone, with 3 active chat windows, while surfing and adding the latest Back Street Boys photos to her web site. OK not exactly ground breaking but she is the average.
As these kids grow up they will be able to juggle/multi-task and assimilate huge amounts of information. The bar will rise.
The comfort they have with the technology will result in the uptake of many of the ideas that are floundering today.
That said, I wouldn't give much credence to the people who are telling you that you are in some way obligated to work a crappy job because of your age. This is a form in the crabs-in-bucket mentality, nothing more. Nonetheless, you shouldn't turn your nose up at honest work. If you can't get your plum tech job, try and find something that will help you practice another skill, such as customer interaction, and keep up with the tech stuff in your off hours.
If you don't
---- I'm going to lead you kicking and screaming, giggling and laughing into the future.
That was very well said.. I've read most of your pieces here on Slashdot and to be honest I think that is one of your more insightful writings without being over verbose but rather straight, clear and concise to your point. Reading the first and comparing to the second it seems that you've come to a general overtone.
I know I'd be wrong for thinking that the series ends here, (even though it should) however I await to see where you go with part 3.
I agree with part 2; good job.
For a man who decries negative images and stereotypes of geeks, Katz (who I do not think is nearly as bad as some thing) manages make this a hideously offensive column. In short, teens are smart a$$holes and we need to teach them ethics.
Wonderful. In one fell swoop he manages to both generalize and be shallow.
The part that galls me the most is that agression in teen online culture (which is there, but its in many online cultures) did NOT happen in a vaccum. Guess what? It came from their parents, culture, religion, media, etc. The violence and violent attitudes we see don't just appear, the kids didn't invent them.
It almost sounds like Katz blames the net by default.
Kids are young people. Teach them. Raise them. Be responsible and understand them. Nuff said.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
The tendency of geeks to be narrowly educated, self-serving, smug, and intolerant effectively relegates them to the margins of society. Their technical knowledge is impressive, but from a political/change-the-world standpoint, it is about as useful as knowing the names of all of the Pokemon. If you want to change the world - even a little - you have to be able to engage in intelligent, educated debate. This is a social skill that comes with education and - yes - age.
...
/. users (not anonymous, we've got karma and we'll use it if we have to), is that Jon is really pushing the limits in his stereotypic mythologizing, yet again.
You mean knowing all the names of all the Pokemon isn't useful? My son knows them in English, French, and Japanese
Seriously, I think a common thread to most of the posts today, all from
Look, we're not gonna uncheck it in our settings, because we know that just encourages more hapless victims to read it. Ignoring the problem won't make it go away.
So, to sum up - Jon, get a life. Teens have way more important things to do than you describe, and geekdom is usually a symptom, not a goal. My son was describing the social scene amongst the teens and preteens yesterday and the groups they were in. Some of us spend a bunch of time with kids, some tech, some not. And we all think Jon is really pushing it with this series.
Drop the series. Stop "having" to write in magazine article length and chopping it into snippets. That is so last century, so pulp paper magazine concept. I've sold many stories to zines and magazines and published in a number of countries for bucks and we all know the drill.
Read your users. We want short, sharp, insightful snippets with links to the boring crap. Stop insulting our intelligence with these recastings of longer "theorizing" or "mythologizing" articles that you broke up because we got angry when you went on for 3 screens. Adapt to the media or get out.
Go out and find some real stories - maybe about rave paraphenalia becoming illegal and how blinky electric things are a new fad sweeping the world. Maybe something about how cell phones are now so popular that they're becoming passe. Do some real work, get a fresh insight. But don't feed us this old old line, ok?
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I remember way back when in the late eighties when all the experts were afraid of the blue screened babysitter, the television. All youth is suffering from mindrot! They don't do anything!! They are all gonna become overwhieght commie hippies and die young! At least this way, you might just pick up some tcp on the way, maybe learn how to set a massive pr0n ftp.
All a coder really wants, are fast cars, fast women and fast algorithms.
Wait wait, while 90% of my age group think they are '31337 hax0rs' just because they tricked someone into installing the Back Orfice server, not all of us are so blissuflly ignorant. There are those of us who understand and use computers and the internet like the "elders" (30 year olds?) referred to in the article. We aren't all script kiddies.
chdir("c:\\con\\con");
Having grown up in isolation during the important teen years they are fairly incapable of valuing the experiences of others. Teamwork is harder for them to deal with. I've noticed more problem trying to get the youngest employees to work well with others on the job. And this attitude of ``you old people have nothing to offer'' is only reinforced by Hollywood and the television industry offerings that invariably depict adults as drooling idiots or evil monsters. It's no wonder that when someone in their twenties or early thirties lands in a position of responsibility in the workplace that they rarely feel comfortable having anyone older than them on the team.
This is by far the best post I've ever read on /.
However, as I get older (I'm getting close to 30) I realize that they are not and never were right about many things. It really feels strange to me but often times they're just plain wrong about things.
I also used to read Kats on HotWired He seemed pretty insitefull then.
But not so much anymore.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
If you, ANY of you, are interested in the subject, you owe it to yourselves to read Neil Postman's very thoughtful analysis of the sad subject, "The Disappearance of Childhood".
Postman posits that the phase of human development we commonly refer to as "childhood" is a social construct, one that came about primarily as a result of the public educational system created in America only a couple hundred years ago.
Childhood was a period in which the institutions of society (from schools, to government, to families, to churches) actually "protected" children from information. (I can hear you squints groaning already, but please, let me finish). This was easily managed because there was a rather universal morality that the various institutions that made up our society subscribed to- and- terror-of-terrors, it was pretty much the Judeo-Christian one that most of the founding fathers (Deists, Puritans, Christians, Agnostics all) believed in. Children, brought into the public education system, were not only taught math, science, etc.- they were taught the ten commandments, the pledge of allegiance, etc. (They were taught patriotism and morality- by the schools! ARGH!!!)
Childhood, then, was a period in which children were taught a standard of right-and-wrong, and were also kept innocent from much of the harsh realities that their minds were deemed not yet ready to contextualize.
Information was tightly controlled and regulated. There was no ratings-driven-and-and-advertising-subsidized-mas
I know, it seems terrifying. There are a million bad things to say about such a society, and I've no doubt that hundreds of you will re-appropriate all the bile and vitriol you've stored for diatribes about the evil menace that is Microsoft in eviscerating the evil menace that was "America" until recently. We know too well that such a system is capable of legislated racism and sexism (truly and inarguably terrible legacies of America 1.0). We know it is capable of gross violations of civil liberties, with impunity (government-sponsored biological experiments on its own citizenry, wiretapping, etc...).
But there are benefits and advantages to having universal standards in a societal system- and I don't just mean for those institutions determining the standards. I'm talking about the people. One of the greatest benefits of such a societal system was a public education system that was, in its time, unparalleled in the entire world for providing a quality of education to any willing citizen. Another benefit was that shame was a powerful psychological force for discouraging behavior that was not in the society's best interests. Seem puritanical? It was! But many of today's societal ills- especially those that affect children- were all but unimaginable then. Teenage pregnancy? School shootings? Drug-addiction in teenagers? They weren't a problem. Why? Because it was "WRONG" to have sex before marriage, "thou shall not kill", and "what are drugs", respectively?
The human mind is, in a very real sense, akin to the computer it ultimately conceived of in its image. The best and most productive minds are like the best and most productive computing systems- the have a tested, feature-rich operating system controlling the activities and information storage/retrieval of information itself. When humans don't get taught a worldview (a comprehensive perspective on right, wrong, truth, value, etc.), they are less effective when it comes to contextualizing information. You can have the biggest hard-drive in the world, and if you're running DOS 1.0 on an IBM-PC, you're pretty much going to be limited to a dull-ass computing life.
In answer to the original question, "does childhood end when computers come into (kids') lives?". No. Childhood ends when children are given unrestricted access to uncontextualized information. So often, when the subject of school shootings comes up on Slashdot, it descends into arguments about gun-control, videogame violence, first-amendment issues, etc. But every so often, someone nails it by saying, "Parents should teach their children right from wrong". Parents now are the sole institution with the authority to teach their children a worldview. And sadly, more and more parents are abdicating this profound responsibility by turning their kids over to be taught by television sets and now, the Internet. (Divorce happens in half of all households, showing children that even the parental institution isn't reliable or trustworthy). Childhood, as we've known it, is going to become an outdated concept. And it is more fitting to ask, "can childhood ever begin?".
I've hardly done justice to Postman's wonderful book- go and buy it now if you've any interest in a thoughtful, NON-CHRISTIAN examination of the issue of the eradication of childhood.
You spend half a dozen hours a day, or a dozen a day in summer, in front of the screen, you learn a thing or two.
Not true. My brother has been doing this for the past two years, and he still has to ask me to how to do even the most elementary things - like, change his homepage. He's a smart kid - he just has no urge to do anything on his computer but play games. As a result, he has learned almost nil about his system.
Even worse is our recruitment of student workers for ITS. Out of an incoming class of 600 students or so, at most 10 will have the problem solving mindset that makes them any use to us. That's the big factor; aproaching a problem with an open, inquisitive mind. We all know users who freak out as soon as they get a print error or a 404 on a web page. To the majority of computer "users" out there, the computer is still a vague box full of piss and voodoo, just waiting to rain all over them.
After having a problem solving attitude, the next thing a 'hot' computer geek needs is a desire to see the big picture when dealing with the various systems that make up 'tech'. Too many techs seem content to master their small domain without looking beyond. Again, we get some students who are ''Win95/98 wizards" but balk when they are put to work on DOS, Mac or Linux machines. Finding ones that enjoy the challenge of learning a new system and aren't afraid of appearing clueless about something they've never touched before is also a hassle.
Oh well, as more young people have access to computers, more hot geeks will be showing up. Think of all the computer genuses who lived and died before computers came along or are in the other 2/3's of the world and might never have a chance to shine.
I drank what? -- Socrates
You know, people not in my generation are too old to use computers. I'll bet thats gonna piss someone off, but before you reply, understand that I do not believe that to be true. But it is an unfair generalization. I am annoyed by this subject title because "fifteen year old geeks" is not a very specific nor good title. Also, the faults of few project on the image of many; meaning that some teens are worse than others. I am an Eagle scout, and consider my leadership skills good. I also consider myself aware of the world around me, and I believe that I live in the same world as everyone else. I just finished reading Levy's hackers. I don't know how realistic it is, but if it is, then I know this much: the college students at MIT during the late fifties were not as a ware as 99% of teen geeks today. Is it fair to say that no college geek in 1958 knew anything about copyright laws? Or knew anything about women? Its not fair to say that, because there are exceptions to every rule of a public group. So please - STOP THESE BS POSTS! THEY ARE STUPID, AND SOMEWHAT OFFENSIVE. Thank you.
smiller-time "I have two rules: I am God, and God is infallable."
Jon, you did such a great job with the first article, I don't really see the point of this one.
15 year olds have power, but they are still kids, and this dilutes their "power."
that sums up the first article.
this one is, "15 year olds on the net, but they are still 15 year olds."
really, I don't see the point.
skye
this reminds me of Lain |Serial experiments.. (layer 06: Kids)
And they're not getting a tan, either.
Computer use *can* lead to great things, but that's a far cry from saying it *will*.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
In order to get a job, you can reasonably expect to send out hundreds of resumes and make hundreds of phone calls. In one job-hunt period, I quite posibly contacted 750 potential employers and probably never heard back from at least half - not as much as a flusharooski.
Yeah, but it describes them as resourceful, clever and better than everyone else.
Two sides of the same prejudicial coin.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Also, anonymity allows for expression of many thoughts that might not come out in the 'real world' - hence, flaming. Personally, I've found that a majority of flames that I've received have been from the younger side of the population. I do agree with Katz on that point - you can see in the postings the difference between the type first, think later, and those who think their comments through. There are many stupid adults who shoot off their mouths (I've met plenty) and smart teenagers who think things through too, though.
Lastly, the theme for early comments seems to be that experience is vital. It is. Being a young engineer, I find I know very little, and find out constantly that paper is not the real world. There is no substitute for experience, and though at times certifications and degrees may seem like BS, it's not only the knowledge companies are looking for, it's the experience that comes with attaining that knowledge.
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. -Galileo Galilei
Everything in that reply is right and true.
Teenagers in other parts of the world aren't necessiarily anything like the negative stero-type painted by you and others. I've seen levels of dedication, intelligence & humility among teenagers & children in some ethnic groups that would make Americans' jaws drop in shock.
People think humans are a certain way, from the behaviour they observe in their own society, & from what they know of other societies. In a highly insular society like in the USA, other behaviour-sets are unfamilia, & thus people believe certain behaviours are inherant to humans, when they are infact 90% cultural.
When i was 15, i spent most of my time writing apps in VB and dabbling around with assembler on my 386. Internet access wasnt that common back then. We would all trade ftp addresses on BBS's and i would connect to my firneds BBS everyday to get my free 15 minutes of FTP access, at 2400 baud. When i was 15 i used to have trouble understanding some programming concepts. But i could tell that as i was getting older my mind was getting more flexable, allowing me to under stand increasingly more complex concepts. Now i'm 20, and i've gone a long way. but i cant help but to think that we never grow up (: There are concepts and thigs that i dont under stand today, but i'm sure tomorrow i'll catch on. But cmon here, 15 year old kids, while very smart these days and have basically uninhibited access to information, wont get out of control with all this. They are going to turn 18 someday, go out into the real world, and the adults that have been around for the last 40 or so years will put them in their place. Rules always have their exceptions, but the exceptions rarely make the rule.
I didnt mean to imply such a thing (that all 15 year olds were arrogant) - and no your response didnt fall under the "smart ass" category. I do like your reference to the "pop culture" aspect of things though as it brings to light the reason oh so many people ran out and bought computers for the home.... (In my opinion anyway)
Most of my rant was directed at Katz in general however. He has gotten pulled so far into this cyber lifestyle of his that you cannot help but to wonder when the last time he actually saw the sunlight in person. Or maybe the last time he actually had to sit down and enjoy a meal rather than to consume it.
The problem here is that the reality of the world seems to bear no weight in anything Katz has to say. This would be somewhat better accepted if his writings were a bit more forward looking - but he proposes that the things he is talking about are actually happening in the here and now. Many of us simply do not agree.
The concept is simple: You must understand the past before you can reveal the future. I believe Katz has yet to grasp this concept.
Gam
"Flame at Will"
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
Please, quit idolizing the new "Tecnically-Savvy" generation. It's killing me. This is the same sort of common-knowledge-myth which makes employers thing that people over 30 do not understand technology, never mind they may have been coding for 15 years.
Yes, most teenagers know their way around a computer enough to operate a web browser, listen to MP3's, and play a first person shooter. I also know the overwhelming majority could not write a program or simple script. No, that would involve a bit of time, motivation, and curiosity. Most teenagers are too busy fighting hormones and following popular culture to do anything intellectual. Okay, a generalization, but a largely accurate one.
There are very bright 15-year-olds. There are many more dullards who come across malicious scripts and fancy themselves Hollywood-style hackers. This crowd, especially Katz, out to know this. Stop perpetuating the insane myth.
I would love to corner one of these self-professed 15-year-old wizards and ask them about various data structures, logic, or compiler theory. I can picture the blank stare I would receive. I'll bet, however, he could tell me the URL for a good warez site.
Still, he has the edge at the next job interview. You see he is under 25 and sports a goatee(sp?). The human resource manager conducting the interview has seen the movies and documentaries. He knows the magic today's youth possesses.....
-- Posted from my parent's basement
I don't see any meat or point in either this one or the previous one. Hello? If it's a feature, shouldn't it actually say something?
'crow, curious and in a bad mood anyways
For once, Katz hits a nail on the head.
.. the world is going to shit'.
.. I just think that now, more than ever, young adults have control over what they see and where they are visitng. 10 years ago, the circles wern't as clearly defined (I personally think because there wasn't as much traffic and money around, so you wern't attempting to sell your image to anyone.), although the same climate obviously existed in some smaller scale.
Despite the obvious generalizations we have to make when discussing demographics, I am a firm believer than now, more than ever, are the next generation of adults are filtering their consumption to suit their agnst, social politics, and what have you. Cliques on the net have never been more clearly defined. One needs only read over various blog circles to recognize that each community typically involving young ones has a strict code of conduct, stipulating words, ideas, and what to rebel against. I AM NOT JUDGING whether the ideas and ideals being rebels against are valid. I'm NOT saying 'kids these days
Yes, I will probably get flamed for this. I'm sure it will be pointed out that this has always been happening, etc etc
"Old man yells at systemd"
Yep, and that's what Slashdot is all about. Mildly interesting article with, more often than not, very interesting discussion/correction/digression by
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
What with everyone posting about Pizza Hut and McDonald's, I thought I'd contribute to a proper balance...so here's my story.
;)
I got my first ever paid job summer after freshman year (that's high school. I was 15). I'd spoken to the manager enough times for him to talk to me when he got his first Unix, a couple of ultrasparcs for mail servers.
When the school year started, I was still their only Unix admin, even though I came in at 3pm. A few amusing times my pager went off in the middle of a class or study hall and my bewildered teachers watched me dismiss myself as I had "something more important to attend to."
Eventually I dropped out of H.S. to work full-time, and soon afterwards moved on to a much more dynamic environment - the dot-com. Worked there all through my 17th year of life. With the 2hr each-way commute and occasional 36-hour days, what shreds of free time and a social life I could possibly have were spent on far from healthy activities. Life here was bleak and shitty. Not going to go into it.
I did, however, survive all three rounds of layoffs and went from being one of a hundred+ employees to one of twelve (wow, the exact reverse of my experience at the growing ISP).
This gave me some confidence. A completely finished company, minimizing itself in preparation for getting purchased, considered me one of the essential people needed to keep services running. So I pulled my act together and went out looking for another job while waiting for the purchase (I wasn't going to jump ship before then, but I did NOT want to work under the new company).
I don't have the words to describe the experience of accidentally finding an interesting, challenging project with a great, talented group of people, and then interviewing with a Big Fucking Cheese at a major financial institution to get it. I mean, I'm an 18-year old high school dropout. This guy makes more money in a single day than my entire life is worth. Yet I'm working here now, learning a ton every day, and doing what really interests me (software development), live in Manhattan 15 minutes from work....and am slowly becoming something resembling a human
Dunno what someone else would make all of this. Certainly, if that 15-16 year old me hadn't been arrogant, socially inept asshole with a complete absence of regard for anything and anyone, I'd have graduated high school this past June and would have been as naive and unexposed to the real world as everyone else. Is this good or bad? I don't know. It wasn't easy, that's for sure, but was it right? *shrug*
If you know what you want, you're sure you want it, and you've got the perseverance and blind donut-give-a-fuck, you might just get it.
*whew* Hrrm, that was waaaay longer than intended. Looks like it was more for my benefit than anyone else's. But I'll post it anyone, maybe someone will get a kick out of it.
-N.
Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe
Do what I did - do some volunteer work. Local schools, churches and community centres are always in need of good I.T. support - but can't pay for it. After 2 years of volunteer work - and one year of part-time paid - I busted my ass to get my MCSE (a month and a half - using Cram guides). Then I went to the nearest corporate and said - "Hi, I have three years experience - an MCSE - and half a dozen references from local community leaders" - They employed me next week. Remember - anyone can *claim* they know their stuff - but nothing beats experience, paper qualifications, and good references. If you have these three - jobs are much easier to find. -Ben
um. well i assume you are about 15. well done for proving katz's point about being close-minded and obtuse...
:/
maybe next time you should "think" before you "shoot"
They have time, energy and particular physical and mental skills for gaming, developing software and navigating the Net.
This isn't different from anybody else (any other age group) in the world. Whoops.
They are smart, creative, and know the inner workings of the the Net and the Web better than any other sub-set of the species.
What's his point? Smart kids are capable of understanding stuff?
They do, in fact, have access to unprecedented amounts of information. Few parents, teachers, pols or reporters have any clear idea what these kids are doing online, or just how significant cultures like gaming and coding have become.
Now he's saying that kids can use Google, and adults can't figure it out. I bet he's also talking about pr0n, but who cares? These are just hobbies, and you can find them from 15 to 50.
The rest of the article just re-states the mindset of any teenager in an on-line context. It's kind of ridiculuous passing off this stuff as original. You can get the same stuff from any study of teenagers, and I'm kind of shocked he didn't include how teenagers misinterpret people's emotions and relate them to teenagers taking out their rage and frustration out on poor unsuspecting 40 year-olds in Quake.
Katz should leave this psychobabble to professionals.
No sig for you.
"...when other powerful things in their lives help keep them grounded: close relationships with friends and parents, religion, a passion for chess..."
Hahaha, am I the only one that finds the passion for chess and grounded bit funny?
-------------------------------------------------
"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind."
what company is going to hire a fresh 16 year old for anything other than grunt work? start at the bottom and work up. this is the real world kid.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I stuck a flute in my pussy. But then I remembered...I don't have a pussy! All I have is a hundred thousands words about 15 year olds written by Jon Katz.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Bash Katz day?
This is becoming very common he post something everyone complains about it.
Lets not look at this at face value. What is true isn't what is said directly but what the world at large thinks of the net and teenagers in relation to the net.
That's what's important. It's clear alot of people think there are hackers out ot get them. And yes there are some people who are lurking waiting for just the right time to do some pretty horrible things to the internet and to your personal information. But normally nothing happens.
So it's not what sterero types are in this piece but that fact that alot of people out there believes this shit. That's what's important.
Sure, there's a lot of us top-twenties yo people out there that can cuss and scream about it all.
Sure we grew up with COCO-8's and System 80's. Some of us even had our very own TSR-80 system.
(Quick Note...
1. My Nana saw radio invented.
2. My Dad saw TV invented but took radio for granted.
3. I took TV for granted adn saw the evolution of the Internet.
4. What will my kids see?)
Remember that we are older, have an education that reflects this and we can appreciate how the Internet has grown from FidoNET BBS's and 300bps modems. Some of us even have jobs that reflect this.
I believe that our advantage is age adn experience. There's only two options for the up-and-coming kids of the next generation adn that is to teach them or manage them because I'm sure that we're not going to be able to whip them at Pac-Man or Asteroids when Anarchy-Online and Everquest are the standard games of today.
It's evolution and remember that they will feel the same as we do when the next generation grow up behind them. (see Quick Note above)
Understanding? I try to be,
Greyice.
Okay, how is a tech-savy geek defined? I'll use the example of a teen I know.
He was/is really into computers, and likes to fancy himself some sort of geek-computer-wizo. He knew how to make basic programs in C++. However, he did stupid things like running a webserver off his account's IP address while running ICQ & a massive ICQ active-list. Nowonder his passwords got stolen (duh). He used to download all sorts of warez rubbish from the internet, and wondered why he got trojans (duh). I could go on and on about examples like this.
The moral is the story is, where does a geek begin and a wantabie start?
Just a footnote but it is amazing some of the
pages built by K-12 teachers in math and science. These people have far fewer resources than college faculty who end up using WebCT, SmartCourse, or BlackBoard or something else that lets them drag and drop or having department secretaries convert Word documents to pages.
Here is an example. Here is another one. My webliographies are full of sites like these. The science ones are mine and I coded the html from scratch.
The web is a very powerful tool. Please don't sell those of us in nontechnical professions short.
Roanna
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