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AP Reports Young People Use The Internet
prostoalex writes "You read a lot of stories about older generation either adopting or having troubles with Internet. But some people in this world cannot imagine their everyday life without Internet. The kids who went to school during the early days of the Web are now going to colleges and are demanding broadband, downloading music, sharing photos and posting to Web logs, Associated Press says. Most of the everyday tasks, like homework and job search, have migrated to the Web as well. According to the latest data, 188.5 million Americans and more than 1 billion people globally are online."
Where's the news in this? A story on slashdot about the fact that there are people out there in the world who can't imagine not having net access? Look who you are talking to here...
stuff
Don't be silly, Old people use email.
liqbase
That's an appropriate use of the Obvious tag for once. Hang on a minute... Oopse, Wrong site...
"who went to school during the early days of the Web are now going to colleges and are demanding broadband, downloading music, sharing photos and posting to Web logs"
Then discovering, to their sorrow, that these services are not free, but were provided to them by their parents. Grow the hell up.
For the longest time, I thought that the free exchange of information that the Internet brings would ensure that good ideas get spread, and that the overall knowledge of its users would rise as a result of being exposed to better information. What seems to have happened, though, is that people who use internet got stupider. Nobody can spell anymore (it's considered 'cool' to screw up even the most orthographically simple words). Arguments on internet boards (with a few exceptions) are getting stupider, and people who would get a good spanking IRL are turning into the most obnoxious flamers. Instead of using the vast amounts of information available to them to reexamine their views, people seek out only the articles and sites which support their already cemented opinions, with little regard to critical thought.
Sadly, it seems that, while the Internet was ready to face the challenges of global information exchange 20 years ago, we are not nearly at that stage yet. Simply providing the tools hasn't helped the society as a whole to improve our level of communication, or to expand our knowledge through the availability of information (fringe groups like scientists excluded). Because of this reason, I'm wondering whether Internet in schools will serve the purpose I originally believed it would serve, or if it will simply produce a new army of AOL and MSN Messenger trolls.
More generally, each generation is more adept at using the technology it grew up using, and less adept at using what its forebears had.
My grandfather's generation toasted bread on a stove or in an oven, usually burning wood. They got electricity in their homes so they could go hi-tech and use a toaster. Well, they needed lights, too, but perfect toast was a big draw.
I'm a tail-end Boomer, born in 1963. My dad's generation could do trigonometry on a slide rule; I need a calculator.
Dad knew FORTRAN and BASIC. I know many computer languages.
I got my first computer, a TRS-80 Model II, in 1977. I learned BASIC and a little Z80 assembler. I needed to learn programming just to use the machine.
My kids have had, as long as they can remember, at least one computer in the house, usually networked together and with Internet access. They don't know any programming languages; they haven't needed to learn any to use the computer.
To my generation, computers were nerdy. To theirs, computers are more like TVs or toasters: part of the furniture.
Recently I gave my 16-year-old daughter, who's not a nerd, a new computer, running Linux. I told her it was different, but that it was Free. Being an idealist, she thought that was Just Totally Cool. A day later she told me proudly that she had her CD collecton "programmed in" so that it had all the information about the tracks and artists for all her tunes.
It's just part of the furniture.
sigs, as if you care.