The Dumbest Generation… Really?

    Ok, so the inspiration for this article comes from Cracked.com, but really it is an interesting phenomenon. Basically, the article talks about how technology took over in 2008. Two entries (Cracked likes lists…) talk about how the older generations (X, Boomers, etc.) perceive us. These perceptions have to do with the way we interact with our technology which is inherently different than one born before the internet does.

    Every time the media talk about websites such as Facebook or Digg is to either talk about how they are the future (really… they are the present!) or about how someone posted something stupid on one of them. The truth is that we communicate seamlessly using these types of technology. I always find it funny when people say that they "check their e-mails twice a day". We do not do that, our e-mails check themselves and alert us through various tools (well, the main ones anyways). It takes us five minutes to go through our new mails, Facebook events, RSS feeds, etc. We can be extremely prolific.

    From the outside, we seem to be losing our time. A digital immigrant takes a few hours to gather the information we get in minutes, therefore, posting several thousand messages on Digg or a message board implies a large amount of time lost but it is not necessarily true. Contrary to any generation before ours, we, from birth have been growing up in an environment where physical reality was just one part of our environment. The digital world is not just a tool to us. It is part of our very being.

    Now, the purpose of this post is not to say that we are perfect that all of our perceived flaws are actually strong points. No, in most cases, those flaws are still flaws. We do waste time on Web 2.0 websites or devices. We do procrastinate and some of us (not all!) are idiots. Those flaws are not, like some people seem to think, huge crippling problems plaguing our generation. They are the same flaws that have been there since the dawn of the human race. The difference is that, to offset those flaws, we are more efficient at using the nearly infinite pool of information within the web.

    To end, I just want to say that I can remember when I first started to use the internet. The children born today will not. For them, information will have always been free and available. I personally cannot even grasp how the world will change once they get in power.