I am guessing that the majority of posters here belong to Generation X (roughly born in the 60’s and 70’s) and I have been thinking about the special relationship we have with the digital revolution that happened in our lifetime: PC’s, Internet, social media, smartphone. We are old enough to remember the largely analog world before this revolution: cassettes, typewriters, VCR’s, film cameras. At the same time we were young enough to be comfortable with PC’s and the Internet when they arrived. Those older than us often never became comfortable with digital technology and those younger didn’t properly know the world before that technology. We have had a unique vantage point to observe this revolution which is one of the greatest in world history. And we are still young enough to see where it will go in the next few decades with virtual reality, artificial intelligence and robotics.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true about older generations. My 60 something aunt is constantly reposting liberal political articles on Facebook, so I think she gets the gist of it.
I think because we of Gen X have seen the world before and after the digital revolution, we recognize how the new generation seems somehow “worse”. That is to say, they spend too much time immersed in social media and less grounded in the “real” world.
Speak for yourself. I’m 69 and I’m quite comfortable with the digital revolution - but one of the advantages of having known the world before it and many another potential technical revolution is a certain scepticism as to whether anyone, old or young, is in a position to see where the digital revolution will (as opposed to might) go.
Got your personal jetpack yet?
Well obviously there is individual variation, but I don’t think there is any question that Gen X is on average much more comfortable with digital technology than the previous generation.
One thing that interests me is the implication of Gen X moving into positions of authority which is happening right around now. Will that help accelerate the use of digital technologies in areas like government, health and education where they still have a long way to go? It certainly helps if the top people have grown up with that technology.
My greatest-generation-Dad bought a TRS-80 in 1981, and taught us kids BASIC so we’d understand computers. My very-early-baby-boom-Mom went back to school to get certified in some aspect of computer programming when I was in high school. She became a systems analyst for mortgage companies to help put us through college. I’d say both of them are more digitally savvy than I am.
Yeah, but for every set of people like your parents, there’s ten more of their age that can’t send email and cling desperately to their flip phones like Linus to his blanket.
I got my first PC (with DOS 1.0) in 1982 when I was 45 and feel quite comfortable with computers. Although I much prefer command lines for much of my work, which is why I never got on with Macs. But I still use a flip phone because my fingers cannot use digital keyboards except with great difficulty. I could, in principle, text from my flip phone; I just never have. But to answer the OP, I have seen the whole digital revolution. I grew up in an era when not everyone had a phone (my grandmother would occasionally get calls for a couple of her neighbors who didn’t) then where everyone had a phone, now people are giving them up (landlines, that is) in droves. That’s amazing.
When my mother (b. 1913, d. 1991) saw me using email, which I started in late 1984, she was utterly mystified. But my aunt, who is now getting close to 90, started with AOL around 1995 and still uses it as the only interface she knows. So we are slower to adapt new things, but don’t write us off just yet.
My dad, in his 80s, used to occasionally bring home electronics (picture an all-in-one computer that included a screen in the housing) for training purposes when he worked at the Post Office. When cell phones became smaller than an actual brick, he bought one, the highest-end model available. Kept it until the phone company told him he had to upgrade as his phone was no longer compatible with the network because it was too old. repeat that scenario from the 90s up to present day, its always been a financial decision for him. He has his first iphone (erm 6 I believe) that he doesn’t like because he doesn’t like Apple’s “walled garden”. His computer is new, the old 10year old tower was finally retired last month and relegated to a toy for the kids to play minecraft on. Mom regularly surfs the internet every evening on her pretty old laptop while watching Jeopardy and uses a Samsung Galaxy 7 for her phone. Any older electronics my parents have are simply because they see no need to spend money if the device they have still works and is still adequate.
I dunno, maybe my folks are outliers, my sister is much more resistant to the tides of change in the world of personal electronics than my parents ever were. Weirdly, my sister is the “flaming liberal” of the family and is the most resistant of all of us to change in the personal electronics world.
I wasn’t born until the 80s, but that’s still old enough to remember cassettes, film cameras and VCRs. The current technology is a mix of mundane and incredible. I was thinking about this today while playing with my new Echo. It’s sort of like having my own Ziggy. Smart phones have been around for years now, nothing special anymore, but sometimes I still can’t believe they exist and that nearly everyone has one.
My dad used to do the same thing when I was in grade school through middle school. That’s how I taught myself BASIC.
What I find interesting is my 3 yr old son constantly asking to watch Paw Patrol or Peppa Pig whenever he’s in the mood. And thanks to On-Demand TV and smart phones he can (if we let him). I had to wait until Saturday mornings to watch cartoons and I had to watch them when they were on (later, GI Joe, Transformers and other shows used to be on before and after school. Just kind of shows how different generations do have different shared experiences.
One worrying effect I see of this is their blindness to others who don’t have access to this technology.
Like poor people. They are marginalized already, and this ‘digital generation’ is pushing them even farther out. Or disabled people. I have a friend who is blind, and she is frequently referred by these young people to information ‘sources’ that are useless to her. Like websites that fail to meet standards and are unusable with screen readers.
Sometimes this generation seems completely flummoxed when you tell them someone doesn’t have a smartphone. Or even any phone at all. They are really very insular that way.
That’s not as much of an issue as it was a few years back. Even some homeless people have email now–they use the internet at the library.
Regarding your last paragraph–I bet that 30 years ago, you would have been just as flummoxed if somebody had told you that they didn’t have electricity or indoor plumbing. Is it really “insular” to assume that any given person has something that literally 99.95% of the population has?
Low-income people and people on programs such as SNAP can get a free smartphone with free minutes, texting, and data, so they’re not completely cut out. They’re low-budget models worth about $25, but they get the job done.
But that’s not true.
In the 2000 census, only 99.36% of US homes had indoor plumbing. So even 17 years ago, we hadn’t reached your ‘literally’ 99.95% level. You & I may have it, but there’s still over a million US residents who don’t. You can’t (shouldn’t) dismiss them just because they are poor.
If that were true it would be a valid point. It’s not. Almost 1 in 5 Americans still does not have a cell phone off any kind. Smart phone penetration still hasn’t broken 70% in the US.
I think one could see a repetition of the old military problem of always preparing to fight the last war, with each generation having a mindset governed by what it’s used to: and if they realise that, they tend to be bamboozled by whatever snake-oil salesman has persuaded them is the coming solution (if only they could redefine government processes as the problem it solves - except that they never really get round to analysing potential problems from first principles before looking for the solution).
For example, in our NHS there was a massive waste of money on trying to establish a single common IT platform for exchange of records (especially bearing in mind the plethora of locally-chosen systems and methods). Some single issues were dealt with properly because they were clearly definable and resolvable (imaging services, for example), but there were too many vested interests in other areas.
And there was a completely half-cocked proposal about national ID cards, where it soon became clear that for some reason government was completely sold on a particular technology, but was completely at sea when it came to thinking about all the problems in the reliability and accuracy in the underlying databases (not to mention the issues of principle over providing some single common route of access to them and thereby linking them up).
I know a lot of people are citing anecdotes that counter your assertion, but I’m with you. The older generation, Baby-Boomer and adjacent, definitely are less technologically adept than Gen-X and younger. They obviously have had to adapt, with smartphones and the internet, but they still struggle with setting up their TVs or have any clue what the flickering lights on their modem mean.
But that’s true of anyone in the heart of a revolution. The fringes will struggle. We may see a 70 year old confused by a tablet, but then we also see a ten year old confused at a rotary phone.
At 48yrs I am right in the heart of Generation X, but even I get confused by the newest tech like smart home devices or VR goggles, neither of which I am confident in setting up.
People talk about how new this is, which is fair: The people who remember how old it is are mostly dead.
First, I’ll define a term: Mass media is mass because it extends beyond the concert hall or theater, to reach the masses. A live show is not mass media. A printed book is mass media. A vinyl record is mass media. A CD is mass media.
Scheduled mass media, also called appointment media, is a historical quirk. It has a fairly easy-to-define starting point, as a matter of fact: The 1920s, with the birth of the radio fad and the start of the first commercial radio stations, such as WEAF. Prior to that, mass media was printed matter, such as newspapers, and recorded sound, such as cylinders and records. The media is the recording, and there’s no disentangling them unless you’re illiterate and need someone to read the newspaper to you, for example.
Television, for all it was a marvel of the age, was Radio 2.0 in any realistic business sense, right down to existing radio networks switching over to being TV networks fairly seamlessly once the technology was standardized. Culturally, however, it was an important step away from the pre-radio media landscape because it was so damned difficult and expensive to get your hands on specific recorded videos prior to the VCR era. You could rent movie projectors, true, but there were limits on what shows made it to film and out into the rental market. There was a whole minor industry of second-run theaters, showing films which had dropped off the main line, but that still isn’t on-demand. Frankly, prior to the invention and popularization of the VCR, there were no on-demand TV shows unless you were Howard Hughes.
With video tapes, we regained the “classic” on-demand media landscape because we’d applied it to video: Buy the medium, put it in the player, and enjoy. Not fundamentally different from grand-pap’s Victrola. However, it was still a secondary market, something the media producers looked down on and wanted to control. (Well, kill, to begin with, and compare to the Boston Strangler… ) You could see older shows like that, but nothing too recent. TV shows might not be released at all; ditto weirder films, including stuff from forn parts.
These days, on-demand video purveyors are the new networks. The primacy of the radio empire*, inclusive of broadcast TV, is crumbling, and becoming secondary to the system which killed VCRs and DVDs. We’ve circled around, but better, this time, because now we have video in addition to print media and sound recordings at our fingertips.
*(By all rights, “The Radio Empire” should have been a pulpy movie serial back in the 1930s.)
Interesting, but IMHO comparing modern on-demand streaming digital media to on-demand books and records is like saying the transatlantic jetliner is the same thing as the transatlantic cruise ship. Sure they both do the same thing and have a roughly similar business model. But there is a vast cultural and technical difference between the two.
One thing you didn’t mention is that we also have the ability to produce print, sound and video media at our fingertips. Where the printing press, radio and television enabled published works to the masses, the internet allows the masses to publish back (for better or worse).
Which, again, is a fundamental cultural difference between Millennials and older generations. Gen X and older grew up with relatively few centralized sources of information - TV and radio networks, book, newspaper and magazine publishers. The internet enabled EVERYONE to become a source of news. I think initially it started out as a good way to get a different perspective or coverage of stories that the mainstream media missed. But IMHO it’s now ballooned out of control, which is why you have the whole issue of “fake news”. Since anyone can publish their own side (or make up a side) of a news story, it’s led to our current state of everyone mistrusting any news that doesn’t already agree with what they think they “know”.
My perception is that those older than Gen X tend to be less technologically adaptable, even when they are adept at one or more technologies. And Gen X tends to be less adaptable than those coming up behind us - Millennials and whatever we are calling the ones after that.
I read something somewhere that has stuck with me (no idea where I read it though, maybe it was here)
The distinguishing factor for success in our digital environment, as the pace of change continues to accelerate, will not be the ability to learn things. It will be the ability to learn something, unlearn it and learn the new thing.
I see this in some older staff at my workplace, those who started in my biz in the pre-web era. They can master new technology but getting them to unlearn something when software changes can be a real challenge for them. They will revert to a former process over and over, after having seemingly mastered the new one.