Generational Computing
Posted on | February 9, 2009 | 2 Comments
Different generations deal with technology in very different ways.
It has a lot to do with the way they were introduced to it during their lifetime. Think about this, Someone who today is 60 was born during a time when color TV was in its infancy, you couldn’t dial long distance phone numbers without talking to an operator and the first computer had only recently been turned on. If the person is 40 today then they grew up in a world still dominated by black and white television, lacked video games and had tethered land lines. If the person is 20 years old today think of the wonders that they take for granted. Space while still mysterious has been traveled, cell phones are replacing land lines at a steady rate. Soon Analog transmissions of TV will be a distant memory.
Digital Divide:
This term is commonly used to describe the gap in economic penetration of computer access. But it also can explain the generational gap seen in computer use. the younger you are introduced to technology the closer you get to fluency in its language. I’m not talking about understanding command line interfaces, or programming languages, but there are certain skills that need to be developed in a person before you can sit them down at an unfamiliar piece of technology and have them begin to approach it. Call it the tinkering gene or machine fluency, those skilled in the art of playing around with things seem to find themselves at an advantage when confronted with new technology. This skill needs to be developed.
Language and Technology
More than any other discipline linguistics lends itself to understanding how people approach technology. Populations with no common language will begin to develop a pidgin version of a new language when grouped together. This pidgin is an attempt to find commonality to communicate with other people. The second generation of people born into the community take the pidgin further, adding in new grammatical constructs, filling in nuances expression. The advances are primarily in language use and rules governing new word creation and content explanation.
If you are reading this blog the chances are that you understand Technical Pidgin to a certain extent. Depending on how old you are and how immersed you have been in technology you can understand how things go together and begin to approach new gadgets gizmos and toys with reckless abandon. Each passing generation becomes digitally aware at an earlier age, moving further away from the pidgin to fluency. But at what point does the learning stabilize?
Digital Natives
Digital native do not know of a time when things were not digital. The network has always been there for them. This is a nebulous concept and ever changing target on the road. Technology is unlike language in that there is no steady state, but rather a continued expansion of tools and tricks needed to keep your head above the binary waves. To be a true digital native you need to conquer that which has not been invented yet.
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2 Responses to “Generational Computing”
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February 10th, 2009 @ 10:56 pm
The first part of your post I disagree with on the part “If the person is 40 today then they grew up in a world still dominated by black and white television, lacked video games and had tethered land lines.”
How many 40 year olds did you interview? I’m turning 40 this year and that is not true at all. 40 is a time when color tv’s were not “cable ready”, most video games were displayed in 8 and 16 bit like Atari,NES and ColecoVision. We also did not have only tethered land lines, we had cordless phones but you had to pull up the antenia first for better reception.
February 11th, 2009 @ 9:24 am
Hi Michael, I should have been more specific about the time frame I was talking about. Grew up with meaning the formative years from 6 -12, when a good deal of acculturation takes place. While Atari & Colecovision Came out in the late 70’s they didn’t reach a saturation point until 82′-84′.
By tethered landlines I was comparing the Landline, home based phone to a mobile cell or car phone. I try to gloss over some topics and explanation to shorten the article, i won’t do that nearly as much in the future.
The video game timetable is a bit off, and I could have found a better argument. I was comparing the saturation of technology related youth pastimes between generations, based on access alone.
Most people in their 40’s i know adapted quite well to using technology, but take the number of people you know around 40 years old who shun or dislike new technology and compare that the same question framed to a 15 or 20 year old age range. You would be hard pressed to find a large population of technopobes at 20 yrs old today because of penetration of tech into their young lives.
Good comment though Thank you!