"I bristle at the blanket assumption that this most recent generation is more 'technically savvy.'"

by Alex Steed · 2008-11-26 09:08:00 UTC
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From the comment board at WBUR's On Point. Listener Charles Caplan's comment came in response to the assertion that this generation is "more technically savvy" than previous ones:

I bristle a bit at the blanket assumption that this most recent generation is more “technically savvy” than the last. I’m 32 so I fall in that previous generation, and I can tell you that nearly all of the things that have been discussed on the show so far (My Space, i.e. Web Sites, Text Chatting, i.e. IRC) have been possible since I was in high school.

The difference is that it took a great deal of knowledge and effort to use those technologies. (i.e. You needed to know HTML to make a web site, and you needed to know networking information and text commands to properly connect to and use IRC.)

The difference is that geeks of my generation (in the more classic sense of the word, meaning a nerd with technical skills) have made the tools to use these existing technologies, smaller, faster, cheaper, and most importantly EASIER to use.

The youths of this current generation are on average no more technically savvy than even my parents, the difference is that they have grown up with and taken the time to learn how to use the technology that people of my generation have been making so easy to use that they don’t even need to RTFM anymore."

Alex Steed
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