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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."
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.
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.
They are users, nothing more
And they will be used.
~
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
``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
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.)
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 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.
You certainly have the TL;DR part of philosophy nailed.