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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."
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."
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.
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.
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.
And what's your evidence? Of course, we can probably only offer up our own anecdotes, so I'll offer mine up too.
CBC Radio was talking about this earlier in the day. Young people seem to be viewing computers and the internet as tools they wield for doing whatever it is they want to do, be it contacting friends, maintaining social networks, communicating with other services, doing homework, etc. Many of them don't have the same curiousity or interest that many of us (the /. and other techy crowds) have towards these tools. A guest on the show lamented this, saying that we've lost the ability to "tinker" with our tools (*cough*), and that tinkering is an essential life skill.
I don't really agree with that guest. Many of us use tools to accomplish our goals without trying to tinker with them. I drive a car regularly and have no interest in knowing the ins and outs of its mechanics. Similarly with vacuum cleaners, washers and dryers, mechanical pencils, radios, and many other tools you may come across in your daily life. If it works, and helps me do what I want to do, that's all I care about. It's the same attitude that this younger generation (many of those in my university specifically) takes towards computers and the internet.
I think that is the real measure of how integrated something is in our lives. We don't really have to think twice about the tools we use in order to live our lives on a daily basis. They're just there, and we can use them when we need them, and we don't have to know everything about them.
But that doesn't mean that they're stupid. They know "the internet" is a sort of virtual space where services reside. Whatever hand-waving or magic or technological means are involved to deliver those services to them do not matter to them, so long as it works. And that's a perfectly fine attitude to take, imho. We all take that attitude to at least some degree towards at least some of the tools we use on a daily basis. This just boils down to people having different interests in different things. But to try to insinuate that young people are stupid (and unable to differentiate between the internet and Facebook, for example) just because they take that sort of attitude towards something that you or I are interested in is just bigotry. The inner workings of "the internet" are as foreign to them as the techniques and history of knife forging are to me. That's all there is to it.
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.
Wow, I either have a distorted view of what "digital native" means or you do.
The US is full of car natives. When you wanna go to the mall to hang out with your friends you don't go saddle the horse.
This younger generation is full of Internet natives. When you wanna talk to your friends you don't reach for the telephone or pull out the quill and ink pot, you jump online.
FFS, what are you people talking about, you're on a god damn Internet forum.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
As opposed to a self-righteous and smug generation with a sore shoulder from patting itself on the back?
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
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
Repeat after me: Email is NOT a file transfer protocol.