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The 'Net Generation' Isn't
Kanel introduces this lengthy review in Spiegel Online this way: "Kids that grew up with the Internet are not 'digital natives' as consultants have led us to believe. They're OK with the Net but they don't care much about Web 2.0 and find plenty of other things more important than the Internet. Consultants and authors, mostly old guys, have called for the education system to be reworked to suit this new generation, but they never conducted surveys to see if the members of 'generation @' were anything like what they had envisioned. Turns out, children who have known the Net their whole lives are not particularly skilled at it, nor do they live their lives online." "Young people have now reached this turning point. The Internet is no longer something they are willing to waste time thinking about. It seems that the excitement about cyberspace was a phenomenon peculiar to their predecessors, the technology-obsessed first generation of Web users. ...they certainly no longer understand it when older generations speak of 'going online.' ... Tom and his friends just describe themselves as being 'on' or 'off,' using the English terms. What they mean is: contactable or not."
You can get on the plane, but I'm getting fucking IN the plane !!
There were no Techy generations. There were Techy people, be they blacksmiths or chip designers.
Techy people of different generations did their thing, but most people are spectators who don't WANT to know how things work.
They always will be, and for geeks, this is good.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Many young people abandoned email for MySpace, then within a couple short years, abandoned MySpace for FaceBook, both times because spam made the previous system essentially unusable for them, and they didn't want to take the time to learn how to filter spam (not even to switch their email provider from, say, Yahoo, to GMail). They don't differentiate between "The Internet" and a service. To them, FaceBook is the internet.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
If you're asking why the latest generation wasn't fooled by "web 2.0" privacy watergate, it's a foregone conclusion that people BELIEVE the socializing lies that define our politics, if not our very souls.
FTA: "Many of them don't even know how to google properly."
"Generation @" would be watching teevee or listening to the radio if they didn't have a computer. They go where their friends go, use what their friends use. They are nothing more than cattle, going along with the herd.
And not the whole world or America.
I'm a native of both and the article rings somewhat true of the people I know. But to be blunt about it, I think there is more to do in Germany, especially in this age range. More clubs, more affordable entertainment options, more and cheaper excercise options. More mass transit too, to get there.
I grew up as a latchkey kid in suburban borderline rural America and summered there. When I was 10-15, I was bored out of my mind most days and would have loved something like the internet. I was just too far from anything entertaining, including other kid's houses. It all comes down to having a car culture, imo.
One example, I find pools very expensive in America. Even my YMCA isn't cheap and is like 7 miles away. In Germany, a schwimmbad, hallenbad, etc are somewhat ubiquitous and cheap (5 euros entrance). The outdoor baths are particularly nice, having several pools, one usually Olympic size. None of this means anything if you can't get to it, but again, Germany has massive transit especially rail, and bus, and it doesn't take hours to get anywhere like the bus systems I know from Seattle or Philadelphia. Also, there are sidewalks and bikepaths everywhere, on the side of the road. Here, I had 3 friends that got hit over the years because it's mostly patchwork, if it exists at all.
There can be other factors and I'm sure urban kids have a different experience.
Today's kids have grown up with the net. It is so in-graved into today's society for most that most kids don't even think about it. The net is nothing special now like it was years ago. I remember years ago when the net first came around to everyone. It was something special and new then. I used to spend hours just looking around and finding new and different things. Now I mainly go to the few websites I like. It went from a new fascinating thing to simply a tool to get the job done. The magic is gone from the net now that it is everywhere and used by almost everyone. Just comes with the times.
I'm 19. I care about the 'net and social networking and the effect it has on the evolution of culture and social intelligence. I think what this study means to conclude is that the 'net has become integrated so much into our lives that it has lost that 'new car' feel. That doesn't make it any less important.
I put forward a controversial/unpopular position.
For most technology most (99.99%) people just use what they have or are given and apply what they have known from the past. They lack the imagination or resources to create anything original. Life is just too complex to change what works. Yes, for most people the computer is just a typewriter, and that's what they will teach their children.
If you really want to continue with your quest for the 'Net generation then the place you are most likely to find them is in Africa, or those countries who will have to make a big leap from stone age to internet age. Africa has far more original/innovative uses of cell phones because they were not baggaged with land-lines.
First adopters are always the biggest geeks. The internet, however, is less about its applications today than it is about content. When I started college, the World Wide Web was just emerging, and one had to have some technical aptitudes to know what to do with a PPP dialer, Eudora or, even more primitive, PINE mail, Gopher, Telnet, etc. The first major graphical browser, NCSA Mosaic, had just come out. But the net is so ubiquitous and content driven that users aren't talking about the net in terms of its technology... they're talking about it in terms of content: movies, music, images, news, friends, games, etc.
A technology becomes most useful is when the tech itself is at its most transparent, and the user is directly interfacing with their content with no tremendous awareness of the underlying layers (e.g. OSI model)... and that is precisely how it ought to be, be it for casual or business usage.
Cue the retards who flamebait.. damn too late apparently theyve already arrived.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Good conversation that just happened two seconds ago to reinforce what they said in this article. Shauna skype Me oook Shauna get on
Many 'consultants' don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about, but get away with just making up facts because their audience doesn't have the slightest clue either. Why go through all the hard work of actual research or peer-reviewed articles when you can get paid big bucks for just spouting off something that sounds good?
I am officially gone from
My smug sense of self-superiority! You've killed it!
They look at the internet as just another appliance.
Still it does seem their lives revolve around the net, with webcam chatting, youtube creations, live chats, and texting. Just like I always have my TV or Radio turned on, even it's just for noise. It's ever-present.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"This changes everything" is always false. It nevertheless gets repeated endlessly, and people go "yeah" rather than recognizing the warning signs of stratospheric hype and self-delusion.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Next you'll tell me that MTV generation didn't understand how a CRT worked and merely accepted the 60 hz spray of electrons into their eyeballs thoughtlessly.
Or that the telephone generation of the 50s didn't spend long hours thinking about the automation of connections.
I'm 21, and I assume the "Net Generation" refers to the same generation I belong to (AKA Gen Y, Millennials, etc). This is definitely not me. I admit that, in some ways, I sometimes feel older and more mature than I actually am, so that might have something to do with it, but I still found this very surprising. Then again, I'm commenting on slashdot, so I'm probably not representative of the average person, anyways.
Video on YouTube!
Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg?
Web 2.0 is a bunch of existential meta-crap. No wonder they don't care about it.
It's like any generation since the 1930s' not giving a damn about electricity. It's just always there. Kids today are interested in the Internet about as much as we're interested in our power bill. It's there, it's useful, but we don't make no never mind about it as long as it works.
This is why I dropped out of a CS degree so many years back. Kids just take CS classes because it's either expected or their parents think it will make them lots of money. The real interest is gone, and unfortunately the curriculum has changed to reflect this. When you start to teach kids the real nitty-gritty of being a sysadmin or programmer, they loose interest fast.
I dropped out of university classes so that I could actually work a job that would let me pursue my interests in computers and the Internet. Now I work for the same university I dropped out of, as a computer technician.
Internet has disappeared into the walls like indoor plumbing and electricity. After much novelty, it becomes ubiquitous, for these kids it's just there and always has been.
The neophillia is experienced by the generation that bridge the period between when you had to walk to get water, and the period when you didn't, when you lit a candle and when you flicked a switch.
I understand the importance of a global digital network because I remember in my childhood there wasn't one, in my teenage years it was developing, and now I have a career in it. I've bridged the period of and no new generation will experience the same thing.
What changes will my children face.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
What the heck do you *do* then, that you have no interest in, or skills in, those things that make up technological civilization? Egads I simply can't imagine being that un-curious about things. Being a tool user is what separates us from the lesser primates. You say you use this or that that this "someone else" knows how to make work, to do what you want to do, so what is that, just be a media consumer, or what?
This is mind boggling to me, I grew up with a tool box and tearing stuff apart and building things, etc, ALONG with reading all sorts of things, being interested in nature and learning about that, etc. Granted, I don't program, and that is because my mind just doesn't work that way, linear and rote memory, I think spatially, which is why I have always preferred the GUI..but that still didn't stop me from learning to build/assemble computers either, have done that a bunch.
If you are a representative of this generation and demographic they are talking about in the fine article (or older I guess but with the same attitude), what the heck do you DO? Those kids, what the heck do they DO?
Note: not being snarky or flaming, not at all, your post just blew me away, I honestly do not know a single person in meatspace like the folks in the article and somehwat you who have no apparent interest in any technology that we all use, other than having someone else do it so you can use it.
the young people like cell phones and what goes with it: texting, pictures, movies, games, voice calls.
the wired world is getting to be for old farts, the information superhighway is starting to fill up with old coots in their old Cadillacs.
If you declare a revolution and talk about how everything will change, you can get published. Present at conferences. Invited to speak. And maybe even get paid for it, or else get new job offers or consulting gigs.
And everyone is so desperate to improve education that they'll grasp at anything to prove to the public that they're making big strides in changing education, even if there's NO PROOF of any change in educational income. It's snake oil.
The expensive, commercial, packaged curriculum products have the same problem. There's little evidence to back up one versus the other, and few studies showing any educational benefit. But the districts, desperate to fend of being attacked for doing nothing, spend limited educational dollars on them.
My prediction? Perversely, schools will spend more money on technology and materials as their funding is squeezed and test scores count more and more. After a couple of years of declining scores, they'll abandon whatever the current efforts are and spend a ton on new ones. And it'll just keep going.
... are out of touch with what people actually think and want?
Say it aint so!
They may have grown up with internet existing.... but their parents won't let them touch the computer. Let alone use it as a toy.
On average, they know just enough about the net to know it's dangerous for kids.
Sorry.. the 'net' generation is something that will start 20 years from now, not anytime soon.
it's ok.. the masses know not what they desire.
Whoever modded this informative should have actually read it first. Parent copypasta'd the article and then edited in homophobic bigotry.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
For years I watched younger family members grow up from wee lads and thought to myself, oh boy, next generation, they're going to make me look like a Luddite. Yet the outcome I had feared - finding myself suddenly behind the curve, no longer able to catch up with technology, maybe even "average"... deep down, I think would have preferred that. Having 20 year olds ask me for computer help makes me sad. It makes me want to say, you kids were supposed to charge ahead. But I don't see you charging anywhere. You don't even vote.
... how many people that drive a car have a clue about how an internal combustion engine works? Or even which brands of car are reliable?
Heck, for many drivers, a manual transmission is a mystery.
Ya, but WHAT? In the fine article the kid outlined said he was really into basketball, and that was it. whoopedy zing, that's it??? for real? So I repeat, what do they DO? Just entertainments, media consumption, play sports? Anything serious? Just saying that "they don't do what you like to do" isn't answering the question, it is just further dodging it.
And really, to repeat, I am not trying to "get off my lawn" dump on anyone or any generation, it is just fascinating in an odd way to me to think there are humans out there who have no interest at all in how things around them work, that using actual tools is just never even considered, that that is for someone else, this vague someone else to do.
I am *seriously* reminded of that somewhat famous heinlein quote about specialization and insects. And what makes it worse, is that even the specialization is apparently being ignored now, appears they want to "do" anything else but work/build/create/explore. Just some sort of existence with no real purpose, no drive or something, anyone but them needs to "do that" so they can...what?? Just live, contribute nothing back, expect to go their entire lives like that??
I don't know, that's why I am asking. And that is what I was wondering, I just can't believe it, so I want to know what really takes the place of being a tool using tinkering human today, especially in this demographic in the article.
Growing up with home computers with no distractions like MySpace and Facebook made me a better computer user. I had a lot less resources but I seemed to make more out of less. Today they're toys, in my youth they were toys that you actually had to know something about to get results from.
The one thing that I've noticed about technology is that people get excited about it when there is a lot of optimism surrounding it. You could see that with the introduction of the personal computer, with the coming of the Internet, in the early days of FLOSS, and with the Makers/Hacklabs of today. Once it becomes a product, there is a lot less excitement because people learn the inevitable: technology is just a tool that solves technical problems, it will not solve the human issues that surround us. Even though the lesson has been learnt repeatedly, it is one that every generation must come to terms to. This is just one example, of many, of our generation coming to terms with it.
``Hell, I've talked to professional computer people in their earlier 20s, say 20-22, who think that 'kermit' is just a Muppet. That's truly sad.''
I dunno. It seems to me that in the grand scheme of things Kermit the Frog is far more influential and important than the protocol which was named after him
Another annoying generation label!
generation @
Did anyone want to hunt the guy down and punch him in the balls for that one? Anyone? Just me? Oh. (kicks pebble)
And what is "tech savvy" anyway? I design stuff for space involving chips that have nearly 2000 I/O pads, and the whole board might have 5000 signals and the processing power of a small computing cluster. Am I tech savvy? Or do I need a Facebook account to be elevated to that level?
Same thing happened with radio. In the age of crystal sets, everyone who was interested built one. Not everyone did, but those who were so inclined could build from scrap. Then it was just something that everyone had in their car. Now most people don't even know who Marconi was and if you asked them the difference between a dipole and a Yagi, they'd probably think you were some weirdo.
A wise teacher once warned me:
"Never mistake familiarity for understanding"
Just because someone knows how to use something doesn't mean they understand
that something. Most people seem content to be surrounded by 'black boxes' that "just work",
but they have no concept of how it works -- which means they can't tell when it
isn't working properly.
Hmm, perhaps Prince was onto something.
No, really.
I believe it is the successor to PINE.
Yes, I use it sometimes.
No brain, no pain.
I just don't care
This is an odd story. I think that it is finding some true findings while completely missing the point. WHY is the net generation not adapting to Net 2.0. Is it because "they don't like the internet" or that they just dislike net 2.0? Speaking from experience, I prefer the wild west environment of the internet. I enjoy, regardless of whether I agree with it or not, being able to see the viewpoints and content of almost an endless variety of people.
For an example: If I want to see what dispicable racists believe in to further disprove their theories, I can freely see what they are saying. It's this unregulated, highly diverse environment that I enjoy about the internet. I want to see the good, the bad and the ugly. I want to have free choice of what I wish to observe, from the bizarre and socially unacceptable to the mundane and standard.
As for Net 2.0: While it does have some redeeming qualities for specific purposes, I don't tend to buy into it as any sort of "replacement". It is far too controlled and self regulated. Facebook does not want to entertain the ideas that even I find dispicible, which keeps me in the dark on their viewpoints, and leaves me feeling like I only get one side of the story which makes it much harder to strengthen my own beliefs. It attempts to censure political and controversial material as has been done on youtube, and facebook, and it is simply too cozy with law enforcement in ways that could lead to dangerous precedents for free thinkers to be persecuted and tracked. I much prefer an environement unfettered by authorities (whether governmental or private) in which I can experience all sides of every debate imaginable and make up my own mind as to what is acceptable and what is not. Also, I simply do not give a toss what my friend is eating for a midnight snack. If I wish to know, I'll ask them in person, in a phone call, or an email. I don't require a constant stream of their daily lives, as I can get that information without the use of any technology, in a much more meaningful way.
As far as "living online", where the hell does this come into play as a good thing? Wouldn't it be a negative thing for people to forego the real world, even with the benefits of the internet? I would find this as a very positive piece of information. The internet should be a tool, not an entire lifestyle in and onto itself. By all means, geek it out, but go the hell outside once you're done. Vitamin D is good for you.
Back in the early 1900's, the car was the hip new tech, a few decades later everyone had cars, and no-once cared.
In 2050, when the current youth are teabaggers, they will be going on about the cool kids and their neuro-computers.
Now fuck off Slashdot you hipster cock sucking bastards.
I'm probably a bit alone on this thing, but I may as well post my .02c
I am a seventeen year old high school student and this struck a chord or ten. I always had a love of the technical and the arcane, from when I disassembled and reassembled everything I got my grubby little hands on. I've had to work with my similar-aged, and it just keeps on ringing in my head just how this vast network of loosely connected fiber and copper with the rare bits of 3.2GHz in the short haul is taken so for granted by every other person near my age. Never did I really look at anything without at least some bewilderment and awe at just how far technology has advanced in my two short decades of life.
My first computer was an 80386 running MS-DOS, and I think I am not alone here (at least with the C64 crowd et al.) with how what I did mostly with it was spending hours and hours in the BASIC implementation, crappy as it as, it was definitely a thing I had a blast on, even if it wasn't a real programming language in all honesty. I remember just how astounding it was to look at the numbers when I migrated to a Tualatin Celeron with a jaw-dropping 1.2 GHz of raw processing power compared to something that didn't break the hundreds. And a GUI? And this strange mouse? What just invaded my desk? And... where did my system's guts go, over everything?!
That old jalopy still held quite a bit of good times and memories, especially when I managed the impressive task of making a bouncing square on an NES with it or a loud and high pitched 25% duty cycle pulse wave that'd wake up the whole family with a press of A. I never did any concerted efforts to make any homebrew for it, that said. I even remember after reading this one guy's paper on the inner workings of Metroid's engine and spending more time in hex editors altering the the levels slightly. Hell, my first connection to the internet was a blazing fast 28.8k!
Words can't describe how shocked I was at how carefree people were to the machines I studied so endlessly when I discovered in middle school most of the kids my age didn't even know what the NES is, let alone nifty little tricks like breaking the 10NES or bank-switching to deal with the low ceiling, or how I still can't understand how someone of any age has such a weak sense of wonder and amazement that they cannot care the slightest in how something works or why it works or why when you remove this little cylindrical thing the pretty pink smoke starts to puff from the magical box of P and N doped silicon. I couldn't leave anything alone and I made sure I knew what the hell happened in the appliances I used, simply because a black box is just dull and inviting to be pulled apart and (hopefully) put back together.
Nor can any words put just how much I enjoyed studying the computers of older times, and just that same wonder once more when I realize that the PDP-8 at its most expansive configuration can be fully emulated on a CPU and its cache these days, or spending a few weeks with my father's tools making a mechanical turing machine (with an impressively large tape - 80 spaces made from a notched meter stick), the days I'd spend just learning, learning, learning. When I discovered Wikipedia in 2007 it was as if the world was opened to me, a compendium of all human knowledge (or at least the "relevant" part of it *cough*) at my fingertips, and I'd only have to wait a few minutes for an in-depth explanation on any topic I'd ever think of. The world-wide web is the reason why I had any chance at all to really get so deep into computing before even reaching the age of majority.
And with this, I can say I really was born in the wrong generation. To get the chance to see the computing explosion and the rise of the internet as it happened than in retrospect is something I would kill to get, and it's a sad thing that nobody my age can give even a quarter of a damn about the engineering marvels they have in their homes. (I Am Not An Adult(tm), so YMMV on this statement and all that.)
ReadWriteWeb blogged about FaceBook and was promptly overwhelmed with confused FaceBook users who, apparently, are in the habit of getting to the FaceBook login screen by way of Google. Read the comments - it's hysterical.
Damn kids, get off my LAN!
You are the one out of touch. E-mail is not as popular for personal communication, but it is going as strong as ever. E-mail is how business gets done these days. Just about any company you work for, you'll have e-mail and you'll get and send a lot of it.
Now that may also be part of what it is less personal. I get tons of e-mail since I do tech support, and as such I'm not really interested in using it for personal contact. I'd much prefer a phone call, and that is how I keep in touch with the people I care about that don't live near me.
However e0mail is not "pretty much dead" e-mail is very much alive. If you don't know that, then you probably haven't had a job doing more than fast food (or perhaps not had a job at all).
Who jambed the card punch!
Seriously, you are 26 and already being crotchety? I'm 30 and I think you are exhibiting "Cranky old person syndrome" in a bad way.
You are bitching because people don't know about some old, somewhat obscure, modem protocol? What the fuck? Why would they? Hell even many people who used modems didn't know about it because they didn't use it with the systems they were on (XMODEM and ZMODEM were way more popular in my experience).
As a counterpoint, do you know all about the telegraph, how it came to be, the development, the refinements, the way it changed the world? Can you tell me about the different kinds of keys and what they are good at? What can you tell me about the life of the man who invented it? Can you even tell me his name (without looking it up)?
There are actually questions I CAN answer... Because I did extensive academic research on Morse. It is an extremely important part of our communications history and shaped many other developments (for example it was the very start of the move to electronic funds, with the ability to 'wire' money). However I do not expect random people to know about it. There is no reason to. It is now a historical relic, Morse Code practiced by very few people any more and no longer required even for amateur radio licenses. It is an important part of our history, but not something I expect everyone to learn about.
That is just one example, I could pick many more. Don't get grumpy because the things that were new to you are old to others. That's called progress and it is a wonderful thing.
Now get off my lawn. :D
... I know this all means more money in my pocket. The more people that view their computers and the internet as some mystical or black box appliance, the better. When their shit breaks or doesn't work as expected. I get their business.
If you'd asked my friends and I if we thought computers were a major force in our lives we would have said no, and we'd have been WRONG. Kids simply do not have the level of perspective required to determine whether something is intrinsic to their lives, and they certainly don't have the level of perspective to describe how we should be retooling our society. That's why Facebook can become a billion dollar company in the first goddamn place - because some savvy motherfucker with actual life experience knows how to inject this stuff into the lives of people without the filters required to avoid being seduced by technology. Also see: Extremely old people, people from extremely rural areas.
It seems like the author is making the argument that because Mark Pensky is 64 he can't possibly know what younger people think. Yet the author's own evidence seems mostly anecdotal and the studies he references are not well defined. I sense argumentum ad hominem.
I can't pinpoint precisely when it happened, but it was pretty recent, probably around 2005. The Internet finally reached a real stage of maturity where basically everything humans wish to create was on it, where it was easy and accessible to use by all that can afford it and so on. It fully became the useful, fun, device it is today. As such it really does just blend in to everyday life. I don't marvel at it unless I stop to think about the development I've seen. Normally, it just fades in to the background, it is just another part of my life that I assume to be around, and get annoyed if it isn't.
I think that is something that geeks miss, they used the Internet early and used it as a geek toy. Thus they don't consider the larger development. When the Internet first started it really wasn't good for much at all. Universities could make some use of it for research but it was mostly just a communications toy. By the early to mid 90s it was getting fairly accessible. Most people could get a connection if they liked and you didn't have to be a geek to play with it. However it was largely useless still, other than to play. You could look at various websites people had tossed up, chat with people around the world, but that was about it. It wasn't a tool for getting anything done.
By the late 90s it was coming in to its own as useful. There were legit stores on there, like Amazon, and some unique services, like eBay. More and more useful information was online, companies were using it for business. Still wasn't fully mature though. There was plenty you couldn't do on the Internet. During the early parts of 2000 it just sort of grew and filled in most gaps. It matured to the point where nearly everything is online, you use it just like any other communications system. It is a primary way to get information, conduct commerce, and so on.
It was a fast, and rather seamless, process and hence hard to see. There aren't really any tipping points. The Internet just grew up and went from a toy just for geeks to something it is hard to imagine not having. As you said, it is now like the other services we have, rely on, and take for granted. That means it is fully integrated in to our lives, that it is a mature technology.
As far as I'm concerned, that is a wonderful thing.
My nephew thinks that his generation is smarter because they have the internet and modern technology like that.
I just agree that we didn't have those things so we had to go and invent them.
Who are you calling "old guys" exactly? The pace at which information is not a chronological time normative - quite the other way around. I may have wired one of the first HDLC networks from a Digital VAX machine in the mid 80's for my school system in NJ as a 14 year old, but I am emphatically *not* an "Old Guy". I can only assume I may be of the same age for he consultants in charge here, based again on the assumption that I precede the internet-age "kids". You insensitive clod!
I worked for one of the biggest IT firms in the country (hint: not Apple, not Google, not Hardware). I was chatting to another "older" system engineer about how people at work would choose certain devices to work/play with.
The "younger" groups of people would ask for Macs on their workstations, but only for various things like surfing the Internet (we programmed on the PC). They would buy phones like Apple that had no real programing ability. They would use software that more or less was pre-set and required little in the way of knowledge on how it worked and minimal setup and customization time.
The "older" folks always used devices they could "take apart". Programmable phones, PCs, etc. They would request software that required a higher level of learning and/or time to setup and customize.
I have always believed this was one of the keys to success for companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Apple. They are simple and just function without a lot of fuss or glitter. Simply put, younger people tend to view the technology today like any other technology that has been around for a while. I am sure that the first time people got electricity run to their homes they would spend endless hours turning lights on and off and inviting friends over to see the new wonders. Now we just get pissed when a lightbulb blows out and expect it to work when we need it.
I could be wrong on all this, but just something I observed over my programming career. Oh, and in 25 years of programming on the PC I still do not know any personal friends who actually "program" on an Apple computer or write apps for it. But I do have several friends who own one.
A summary of the study is available, although painful to read in English. It seems to beabout the risks of social networking: "Especially misjudgments of reach, sustainability and dynamics of social web offers may encourage dangerous usage. Many users, for example, imagine themselves in closed and private communities and do not give much thought to the audience or the long-term consequences of their action, which remains documented on the Internet."
There's a national cultural component to that. There have been discussions here on Slashdot about embarrassing postings affecting later job success. Then again, there's the other approach - admit everything and say "So?".
Unfortunately today the standards of education have gone down so much, it's possible to finish school without having programmed a computer _once_.
Programming is one of the most important skills as it enables you to make use of computers. Everyone should have at least a faint idea of what it's about. Just like we teach math or liberal arts to give people a faint idea of that.
This is why I sometime am ashamed to be part of my generation. Nobody seems to want to know how things work or even troubleshoot their own problems with a search engine. At least it will give me a chance to charge my friends for computer help :P.
Just because young people don't want to know how transmission works? The purpose of Internet has always been communication among people, just like the purpose of cars has always been transportation. Weather you also like to rev up your engine is entirely up to you. But if you knew what expense, effort and delay was involved in your doctor communicating with 30 colleges in different countries in pre-net days, you would care that it's here.
If you take apart an item, you're going to own it whether you put it back together or not.
Marc Prensky: "Digital Natives" are more skilled with digital techonologies than previous generations and these technologies are naturally integrated within their lives.
The media: "Digital Natives" are Internet-obsessed cyborgs that communicate exclusively with people they've never met via 140-character messages.
This study: The concept of "Digital Natives" is wrong. They are merely more skilled with digital techonologies than previous generations and these technologies are naturally integrated within their lives.
For someone who's actually familiar with Prenky's writing, it is pretty funny to see the article trying to disprove the notion of "Digital Natives" (or the "net generation") by basically giving textbook examples of the concept. I wonder which kind of editor allows contradicting statements such as "Young people have basically no interest in Web 2.0" and "An impressive 15% of young people have uploaded videos to YouTube" to appear in the same article.
If anything the authors disproved their own misconceptions and wild exaggerations about how young people actually interact with digital technology.
For instance, how GUI-savvy do you think "experienced" users are? You'll find that most do not really care.
Ever tried explaining cut/copy/paste/delete to several? Did they get that triple-click mostly means "select line"? Did they get that quadruple-click sometimes means "select all"? And that Ctrl-A or Apple-A almost always means "select all"? Did they get the concept of pasting plain text (without style attributes)? Did they notice themselves the differences in behaviour between Windows, AWT, QT, Gnome and X? Did they ever bitch about Windows programs that seem to cut off the last new line when pasting, although they definitively had selected it? Were they easily capable of coping with tables and successfully copy contents from text to spreadsheet programs and vice-versa? Did they ever bitch about Ctrl-A and Ctrl-C being a valid ASCII characters which are hijacked by Bill and his desperadoes? Were they capable to search for TABs in a GUI program?
Really basic stuff that makes you much quicker and sometimes indeed more effective if you know it. A true techy will have spotted all of this pretty soon and an application level surfer will not give a toss about this and come with eloquent -but stlll lame- excuses as to why he/she would not need knowledge in this this level of detail.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
excuse me, but im a web developer, and i dont give two shits about the Web 2.0. actually, is there even such a thing anymore ? was there ever one ?
'net generation' does not mean that everyone would become a technophile. net generation meant that these generations would grow up with the effect of internet and the culture it brings on their lives. and voila - it did. billions around the world have much more in common with each other, than they do with their parents. games, instant messengers, forums, social networking sites, they grew up practically together.
that's what net generation means.
Read radical news here
No computers or Internet when we grew up... we had to invent them.
Keep Doing Good.
You certainly have the TL;DR part of philosophy nailed.
I don't think it's even that simple as dividing people into "techy" and "non-techy".
Ultimately everyone is interested in a different domain. The guy you lump in as non-techy because he isn't specifically getting a boner about computers, may be spending hours daily in his garage playing with his car's engine. I don't see why it would count as "non-techy": at some point it was even the apex of being interested in tech. Someone else may be toying with electronics, or making RC models, or experimenting with soundproofing their home-theatre room, or whatever.
Other domains may not qualify as technology, but they're nevertheless a direct equivalent. A doctor spending his afternoons reading about new medicines and illnesses, is really doing a very close equivalent of studying technology. If biology is the science, the medicine part is the applied science, i.e., technology. That guy is pretty much an engineer for the body. If a lawyer reads about legal precedents, again, that's a pretty darned close equivalent of technology. If the basic legal principles are the science, their application is, you guessed, pretty much the technology of that domain. Etc.
Other people are interested in yet other stuff, be it history, or debunking woo, or just social networking. Just because they're not studying the domain _I_ like, doesn't mean I should lump them into some "spectator" category. They're not particularly spectators in the game of life, if you get my drift.
And TBH I'm actually glad that they do study those things. Not as in "less competition for me", but rather as in, "I'd rather go to a doctor which reads about medicine, than to a doctor who's a Linux kernel wizard." It takes many thousands of hours to be good at something, and even more into just staying up to date. And there are only so many hours in a day. I'd rather they spend them being better at their actual job, than rationalize that only my shit is the only thing everyone should know.
And, yes, ultimately that's the impression I'm left with, reading through the thread. Some people are simply just self-centered enough to basically proclaim that only _their_ shit is worth learning, and everything else doesn't matter. And, yes, that includes the techno-fetishism of the previous generation, who thought that _their_ favourite toy will become the only thing worth knowing and the thing which will singlehandedly change the world. It strikes me as some self-aggrandizing fantasy. Actually, worse, it's ego masturbation by any other name.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The idea of a Matrix or a Cyberspace is very intriguing for some people, but there is no such thing. The Internet was and is a information system. It is capable of almost instant communication and it provides people with all sorts of media. Having these properties it is not a space it is the negation of space which makes it so interesting. For example, I can talk and work with people in South Africa the same way I work with people at my current location in Kiel, Germany. There is no real difference.
In the beginning of the wide spread use of the Internet in the 1990th, young people were able to hop virtually from one machine to another. While in technical terms, they just send and received packages of data, this hopping was imagined differently. However, the journey was in our heads not in reality. We went to Australia, virtually, but we never were there in the real world, so the impression of being there was in our minds. The same concept can be applied to cyberspace or any other online space concept.
And the youth today live in the real world, they just use this new communication thing which negates spaces. They meet new people on a summer trip and stay in touch with them via social networking sites, e-mails and chats.
The Internet has driven globalism in the same way this was driven by the invention of sea cables for telegraphs a century ago. Furthermore it allows nowadays the communication of all online humans. And it integrated knowledge transfer concepts.
For young people all these technologies are just there and they have been there all their life. And honestly even knowing that there was a way to do most of these things without the Internet, I do not really know anymore how research could have worked without it in the past.
Almost everyone but the sales people and over caffeinated webmonkeys care about Web 2.0 The rest of us hate it as all it does is slow down the internet in general.
All your extra javascript to do sliding jiggling pop up windows does not impress me or anyone else. Stop it.
How about STRAIGHT HTML and CSS.. if your page load times are not under 4 seconds then your design is a complete and utter failure.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
would believe a story like that. everybody else would probably note that what the web is really useful for was note included in the article anywhere. more mindphucking at IT's best. spiegle, some kind of randoidian 'lazyisfair' blog? consumer catalog hypenosys? phewww.
meanwhile (hardly time for chatting or steaming vdo, as many know);
the corepirate nazi illuminati is always hunting that patch of red on almost everyones' neck. if they cannot find yours (greed, fear ego etc...) then you can go starve. that's their (slippery/slimy) 'platform' now. see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder
never a better time to consult with/trust in our creators. the lights are coming up rapidly all over now. see you there?
greed, fear & ego (in any order) are unprecedented evile's primary weapons. those, along with deception & coercion, helps most of us remain (unwittingly?) dependent on its' life0cidal hired goons' agenda. most of our dwindling resources are being squandered on the 'wars', & continuation of the billionerrors stock markup FraUD/pyramid schemes. nobody ever mentions the real long term costs of those debacles in both life & any notion of prosperity for us, or our children. not to mention the abuse of the consciences of those of us who still have one, & the terminal damage to our atmosphere (see also: manufactured 'weather', hot etc...). see you on the other side of it? the lights are coming up all over now. the fairytail is winding down now. let your conscience be your guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. we now have some choices. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on your brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
"The current rate of extinction is around 10 to 100 times the usual background level, and has been elevated above the background level since the Pleistocene. The current extinction rate is more rapid than in any other extinction event in earth history, and 50% of species could be extinct by the end of this century. While the role of humans is unclear in the longer-term extinction pattern, it is clear that factors such as deforestation, habitat destruction, hunting, the introduction of non-native species, pollution and climate change have reduced biodiversity profoundly.' (wiki)
"I think the bottom line is, what kind of a world do you want to leave for your children," Andrew Smith, a professor in the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences, said in a telephone interview. "How impoverished we would be if we lost 25 percent of the world's mammals," said Smith, one of more than 100 co-authors of the report. "Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live," added Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN director general. "We must now set clear targets for the future to reverse this trend to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out many of our closest relatives."--
"The wealth of the universe is for me. Every thing is explicable and practical for me .... I am defeated all the time; yet to victory I am born." --emerson
no need to confuse 'religion' with being a spiritual being. our soul purpose here is to care for one another. failing that, we're simply passing through (excess baggage) being distracted/consumed by the guaranteed to fail illusionary trappings of man'kind'. & recently (about 10,000 years ago) it was determined that hoarding & excess by a few, resulted in negative consequences for all.
consult with/trust in your creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?
"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, a
"The ringtone generation because they are too lazy, indifferent, unmotivated to create a 10 second ringtone they will buy it and swap it and replace it with the next fad."
While I agree with your general sentiment, better tools help bridge the gap, making self-expression easier, and helping people take one step forward towards even more creative steps later. Here is one such tool I developed for breeding ringtones for the Android (a paid app, sadly), to make self-expression and creativity somewhat easier:
http://musicalphrases.com/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I think the point of TFA is not whether the younger generation *needs* to learn about the workings of the Internet: They don't. The point of TFA is that there are people who mistakenly believe that the younger generation inherently *knows more* about the Internet than other generations: They don't. I can't count the number of people who have stated that their son or daughter knows more about the Internet and computers than they do. While that's probably true, it leads to generalizations about all people of a certain age "knowing more than we do".
The problem is *not* that in general the younger generation doesn't truly know a lot about the Internet, I don't believe they need to. If they're just a consumer of technology then why would they need to know about the inner workings of the tech? The problem is that there are people who believe that just because someone grew up with it that they inherently know more about the technology.
Maybe I'm jaded because I spent a good deal of effort trying to hire CIS students for part-time ISP-level networking and developer positions and couldn't find *one* candidate who had anything like the skillset necessary. Worse yet, we were willing to, and tried to, help a couple of them learn the skills and gain experience. We had things in place that I would've been all over as someone purporting to want to work in the computer field, from MSDN licenses to spare equipment. However, if there wasn't immediate gratification then they quickly lost interest.
I was discussing this exact thing just yesterday, or more appropriately, arguing with someone about this just yesterday. Their assertion is that recent college grads, specifically graduates with computer degrees, must know a lot about the Internet because they grew up with it. I argue that it's largely the opposite. It could be because the local college seems to emphasize web design (like flash and look and feel stuff) over technical subject matter, but most of the recent graduates that I've encountered who are supposed to "just know" about the Internet couldn't tell me the first thing about HTTP, DNS, network protocols, or, well, anything relevant to the inner workings of the Internet. Yet they're CIS graduates who grew up with the Internet. Let's not even discuss the lack of troubleshooting skills.
Yes, I'm making generalizations myself and if you're a recent CIS graduate who is reading this post, then you're already well ahead of the people I'm talking about who wouldn't know where to find slashdot. But let's not miss the point of TFA, it's that people believe that a generation knows more about the Internet because they grew up with it when in fact it's exactly the opposite.
One comment that I heard made was that computers and the internet are purely the domain
of old people.
Younger people would rather have real contact with other human beings.
All I can say is "Good for them!"
Ever watch a movie, motherfucker?
Ever drink coffee?
Ever eat beef or chicken? How about a veggie or two?
How about a play?
Ever listen to a fucking song, asshole?
Ever watch a football game?
The people that bring you all of that are the people you're putting down, you smug geek bastard. Your ass wouldn't even have the CONNECTION to post that arrogant shit if there werent people who made it happen on the BUSINESS and PEOPLE side of things.
Not everyone's a fucking geek.
We published a paper about a similar topic, you will be able to find the full text online. Here's a citation: http://www.mendeley.com/research/embedding-the-internet-in-the-lives-of-college-students-online-and-offline-behavior/
Does anyone remember when television commercials started using websites? E.g. "For more information go to http:/// ", that was one of many 'things are changing' moments for me. Being 21, I started with computers as far back as a 14.4k modem, napster, 286 processors, and windows 95. I think that personal computer technology is being a bit overlooked here. It's not just the internet content that has become easier to use; the technology in general that supported the browser was slow and cumbersome. Over the years that has gotten better, although people now have the slow and cumbersome issue because of spyware, malware, etc that they don't take the time to understand and avoid, but I digress. The summary claims that the internet is no longer something that young people waste time thinking about. I believe that a good part of that is because there is a whole lot less effort to get going thanks to hardware improvements at the user level as well as the infrastructure. We're also looking at vastly different capabilities as the distribution technology improved (broadband). I remember creating personal pages and putting them up on a free hosting service. Part of the design challenge was to make something that could load quickly and took up as little space as possible. While there are still those types of constraints on modern content, they have greatly expanded to allow a larger amount of higher quality multimedia (video, pictures, realtime streams, etc). So we went from a time when people had to be more involved with the process, but couldn't do nearly what we have now due to technological constraints. As the technology improved it allowed a more hands off interaction on the end user's part, but with great benefit. You can now interact with more powerful tools with less effort (generally). Who cares that people think Facebook is the internet? I think that is the wrong way to look at this.
I made a point to say I was not putting people down, just wondering what they do, and that would be an extension on what they will be doing in the future.
As to eating a vegetable or beef or chicken..you don't know me very well..I'm a farmer you doo doo head! hahahahaha I grow things, fix things, build things and so on. I have a rather extensive skill set, just I don't program. I can build a house from scratch, do every single bit of the work involved, top to bottom, foundation to roof. Build furniture from scratch, yes, all the way from starting with a raw log and running a mill and debarker and kiln, then making the finished lumber. Do all the plumbing and wiring. Tear a car or a lot of other machinery down to bits and bolts and put it back together. Stuff like that. Walk out and "read" cows, see all their differences and moods and pick up on their needs and wants. Walk around and identify a ton of plants and animals in the wild. Heck, I even lived out totally feral for a bit more than a year before, totally off the land living, including through a new england winter, the only modern tech I had was my clothes and pack and normal camping stuff like a knife. Back in the day, when things were built to be repaired a little easier than today, I repaired all my broken stuff, everything, it wasn't all use until one thing broke then toss it out, all of it, you name it. And a lot like that there. I've worked from commercial fishing on the ocean to high rise steel in big cities. Worked on some big concerts and a lot of smaller ones. Worked a few commercials before. Geez, lotsa stuff thinking back. And all of that because I started out as a young person who did stuff, had tools in hand.
So, I am cognizant of a lot of what is needed to make modern life possible, I was wondering what the demographic in the article was learning and exploring and "doing" so they could do similar in the future.
They're OK with the Net but they don't care much about Web 2.0 and find plenty of other things more important than the Internet.
Turns out, children who have known the Net their whole lives are not particularly skilled at it, nor do they live their lives online."
Thank God the world is not going to be over yet, then once again the young generations will save us from the dark age of Skynet. By simply going out playing. now and then.
As a teacher, I can tell you that most incoming university students have a very limited set of computing and cognitive skills. They can text on the phone, get to facebook, read some digg or something. But they can't (don't care to) figure out how to insert headers in Word, find reliable web articles, and so on. That's mostly initiative. My wife did a smallish study (just over 100 usable, complete responses). Most students classified themselves as "very knowledgeable" about computers. Yet, when asked what they'd do if their hard drive died, most said "call dad." Almost none said they use a back-up strategy, almost none knew how to do basic maintenance on the machine, and so on. I'm afraid I can't give you more exact results, but maybe I will be able to give you a citation for the publication by next summer.
Now, there are quite a few nerds out there. Maybe one in 25 or so. These are generally male, interested in games, file-sharing and such. They're the ones who go around setting up friends' machines, or setting up big illegal file servers on the dorm networks, and stuff like that. I bet most of the people reading this comment were (or could have been) that guy. You know, if you're too old and weren't say, surfing the WWW via dial-up to a DEC VAX/VMS machine or networking by throwing rocks at an abacus.
People are sheep. News at 11.
So we don't need IT-education because "digital natives" aren't that IT-educated? How stupid do you have to be, to not see that this is the case BECAUSE there isn't enough IT-education in school?
thats like saying we could close all driving schools, because most people without a drivers license aren't good drivers anyway...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
well maybe that's because nowadays you are online ALL THE TIME? How often do you mention that you breathe? nearly never, right?
I'll actually RTFA now, just to verify my impression: that the author is a reactionary jerk who has always been against the net and now claims self-congratulatory, that HE has ALWAYS been right bla bla bla...
haHA! you see? I have ALWAYS been right! and you laughed at me! who's laughing NOW?!
haHA! you see? I have ALWAYS been right! and you laughed at me! who's laughing NOW?!
haHA! you see? I have ALWAYS been right! and you laughed at me! who's laughing NOW?! These pathetic IT experts! I pity the fools!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Most posters are missing the point being hinted at in the article, which is that integrating Web 2.0 tools into education will somehow be a wast of time, or at least be less useful than predicted. This is completely wrong in my opinion, and here's why.
While most teens may not host their own blogs or wikis, this doesn't mean that these tools wont be both useful and engaging in an education setting. In traditional education, for example, a teacher would assign the class to write 3 paragraphs on the characters in Romeo & Juliet. Each student writes their three paragraphs knowing that only the teacher will read it, and it will soon be forgotten. In this model they only put as much thought and effort into the assignment as they feel is necessary to get the grade they hope to get.
In a class with integrated Web2.0 tools, however, the teacher may assign the lesson about Romeo & Juliet as a discussion thread, and require that each student make at least three unique postings. As the students start discussing the topic, they feed of each other and try to post content that will get attention and approval from their peers. This type of forum extracts much deeper thought and participation from students who would otherwise only give the minimum effort.
So, while today's students may not use their recreational time producing their own Web2.0 content, the collaborative environments and real time feedback available with on-line Web2.0 learning tools will still draw students in and in many cases extract deeper thought and better work than traditional techniques.
If you deprive somebody of it for 18-21 years then you get people going nuts and overdosing on it once it is first accessible. The internet was something brand spanking new and generation x ate it up like a junkie.
Similar to kids in Europe they grow up with less restrictions on alcohol and it doesn't seem to be an epidemic of kids drinking over there in excess. This newer generation can be less obsessive about how everything works and be on it all the time.
open source sub sim. I might start coding again for this. http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/contribute/
Generation @ = Spend 4 hours a day posting on facebook (myspace before that) or playing online video games. So they know how to use a mouse almost immediatly (my son) and dont have to be sat down in front of solitare for a couple days (my mother) to get used to it. Thats all it. It doesnt mean they somehow are more technical. I am sure to an average, non techie, 40something knowing how to post on myface (yes I spelled that right) is uber 1337 but come on now.
Generation @ = Internet Consumers not techies
At some point in all our lives (men particularly) we move beyond sports cars (obligatory slash dot car analogy) in my case Alfa Romeos to a CAR THAT WORKS (mine has no AC currently in the US south). Wired and wireless are two parts of the same whole. Listen to CNN and they are talking about what the cost to the current generation is to their well-thought-out desires for wireless access at wired prices and the issue is clear. Ymmv
don't magnets hold things on the fridge? what else is there to know? and it's great they don't kill flash media like they did floppies, right? Oh, and they still operate compasses, or did that change? I am getting old i guess
"True, CLI is just an abstraction, a metaphor, but it's a layer or two closer to what's really going on."
The number of levels involved is just an implementation issue. You can learn a lot from studying Unix, but you should be careful about generalizing what you learn from it.
".. but after I upgraded to a Mac SE I spent 10 years using only GUIs until "In the Beginning was the Command Line".."
The "Beginning of what"? Certainly not the beginning of computing.
I'd argue that computers in pre-GUI times had a much lower learning curve to get to the point of programming. You mucked about in BASIC to change a program to do what you wanted it to do.
Now to muck about with a quick flash game, you have to decompile it, edit it in miles of Actionscript and timeline coding, and recompile it. Further, it is helpful if you understand http, xml, javascript, and basic networking to get anything done.
Writing a game in BASIC was easy.
I would have to assume you haven't lived those times and just read about them. No one in their right mind would have made games in BASIC on such limited hardware.
Furthermore, if you wanted to muck about with a game, you'd have had to disassemble it and run it step-by-step in a primitive machine code debugger (forget about breakpoints and such nonsense!), and you'd better have known by heart all the documented and undocumented ROM functions, memory locations and ports.
No 3D Experience ? If you'd ever tried to write 3D rendering directly in assembler as those guys had to (and without FPUs), you'd realize just how little "3D experience" is needed today to make a Flash game.
It applies to everything, from religion to politics to technology.
The people who make a fuss about something are a tiny minority. Most people just want to get on with their lives, have fun and occasionally do something intellectually stimulating.
Take religion. Most religious people are moderates and quite open-minded. But the small minority of religious fuss-pots make everyone think otherwise. Most voters aren't passionate about politics. And so on.
Of those who do make a fuss, there are several sorts.
1. The ones with vision, who see things that the vast majority have missed, and who feel compelled to tell the story. These are the ones we should listen to. Eg. The economists telling us we need to change the way capitalism works.
2. People who are passionate about their topic, be it science, art, storytelling, whatever, and just feel the need to educate or share their knowledge, skills, talent with others.
3. People who are slightly obsessive and write long emails when their brains are hooked by a concept.
4. People who are highly driven for one reason or another (mostly benign).
5. People who have something wrong with them - neurotics, sociopaths, narcissists, etc. Basically anyone in politics and big business.
6. Prophets. Those guys who seriously believe we're all going to die.
Most people aren't in the above categories, but love to listen to them nonetheless.
So if some guy comes up and says, "hey I know how this stuff and you should listen to me," first determine why he thinks that.
As for me, I think the above because it seems to make sense to me today. Tomorrow, who knows. I think that's how most people operate most of the time.
People still dumb, film at 11.
If they had to work for it, and looked at developing it as a challenge, instead of an annoyance, maybe they would value and respect the net for what it really is, rather than just using it for chatting with friends. They were just given this incredible power, with no real understanding of how hard it was to create. It's like giving a 2 year a gun - they will probably either end up dead, or bored after a few minutes simply because they don't (or can't) have that in-depth understanding of what it is and how to use it. Maybe after it goes off once or twice, they will be too afraid to play with it anymore and will dismiss it. These n00bs were born after all the hardcore COBAL/C/C++ coding, and couldn't care less what languages are used, as long as it has a pretty GUI. There are so many levels of complexity that it's too much for someone born nowadays to try and understand all of it, so they just go with what they can - chatting, email and facebook. Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe we've created a monster maze of complexity that we will never be able to get out of.