![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
when you made a point to be objective
Nov. 3rd, 2005 10:11 amBlogging is making headlines lately. There's a piece in the NY Times about the "rise" (read: discovery by adults) of adolescent blogging, and there was some controvery stirred up yesterday when some parent discovered their child making "inappropriate" use of MySpace and predictably A) overreacted and B) concluded MySpace was somehow to blame. I'm not going to go off on the usual rant here, about how 98% of the time the responsibility for kids doing bad things rests squarely on the shoulders of their parents. Its been done to death, and frankly I don't give a crap. Parents are going to spend from now until eternity misunderstanding their children and emerging cultural trends. Its not just inevitable, its only going to get worse as the pace of technology evolution continues to accelerate.
Instead I'm going to zero in on the thing that seems alternately so remarkable and unfathomable to reporters: the fact that kids these days understand the internet, inherently, without needing to be taught. Its as if in the last week someone flipped a switch, and reporters realized that applied to blogging as well. Sure, the NYT article does a pretty good job of pointing out that its not merely blogging but every aspect of web-publishing and (ugh) "new media" that today's adolescents are going to acquire, utilize and re-make in their own image essentially instantaneously. Still I strongly doubt the media as a whole will grasp that. I fully expect a new round of articles every few months or so as journalists discover that, gee, teenagers are using that aspect of the internet, too.
I am so close to being a member of the 100% digital generation that it pains me. Although I was born after the rise of the personal computer, I can still dimly remember a time when there was no web to speak of. And the only reason my recollection is as fuzzy as it is has to do with the fact that my father got in on the internet revolution on the ground floor. We had a modem back in the day when only geeks knew what they were. My first e-mail address was AOL-based, sure, but AOL was still a DOS application. I do OK around technology; I navigate any computer-based interface quickly and relatively deftly. Like most folks I blow my parents out of the water.
Its intuitive to me. Or at least, it seems that way, until I observe someone like my baby sister in action. She's just six years younger than me, but those six years make all the difference in the world. From the time she was learning to read the internet already existed (admittedly, not exactly the internet as we know it today.) I don't wish to change my age, or to revisit my teenage years. I may not have been born into the new tech generation, but I was born on the cusp, and that's almost as good. Probably. But demograhpics are destiny. I know a large percentage of Americans still aren't online, but leaving out those people in poverty or lacking the requisite mental capacity, that's going to be a self-correcting problem as we move forward.
The group of people starting college this Fall already has an entirely new (and surprisingly personal) take on, well, everything having to do with technology and the media. They feel and express a certain entitlement about digital content I can hardly touch. And five years from now the kids starting college are going to make these ones look tame and passive by comparison. The individual is taking back words and music and entertainment, by sheer force of numbers and an undeniable will. Its incredibly cool. Still, it makes me sad. It makes me feel like I was born just a few years too early. Like I'm a spectator, in a position to observe and comment, but not to have the experience myself. Oh well.
Exalted tonight. I'm psyched about that.
Instead I'm going to zero in on the thing that seems alternately so remarkable and unfathomable to reporters: the fact that kids these days understand the internet, inherently, without needing to be taught. Its as if in the last week someone flipped a switch, and reporters realized that applied to blogging as well. Sure, the NYT article does a pretty good job of pointing out that its not merely blogging but every aspect of web-publishing and (ugh) "new media" that today's adolescents are going to acquire, utilize and re-make in their own image essentially instantaneously. Still I strongly doubt the media as a whole will grasp that. I fully expect a new round of articles every few months or so as journalists discover that, gee, teenagers are using that aspect of the internet, too.
I am so close to being a member of the 100% digital generation that it pains me. Although I was born after the rise of the personal computer, I can still dimly remember a time when there was no web to speak of. And the only reason my recollection is as fuzzy as it is has to do with the fact that my father got in on the internet revolution on the ground floor. We had a modem back in the day when only geeks knew what they were. My first e-mail address was AOL-based, sure, but AOL was still a DOS application. I do OK around technology; I navigate any computer-based interface quickly and relatively deftly. Like most folks I blow my parents out of the water.
Its intuitive to me. Or at least, it seems that way, until I observe someone like my baby sister in action. She's just six years younger than me, but those six years make all the difference in the world. From the time she was learning to read the internet already existed (admittedly, not exactly the internet as we know it today.) I don't wish to change my age, or to revisit my teenage years. I may not have been born into the new tech generation, but I was born on the cusp, and that's almost as good. Probably. But demograhpics are destiny. I know a large percentage of Americans still aren't online, but leaving out those people in poverty or lacking the requisite mental capacity, that's going to be a self-correcting problem as we move forward.
The group of people starting college this Fall already has an entirely new (and surprisingly personal) take on, well, everything having to do with technology and the media. They feel and express a certain entitlement about digital content I can hardly touch. And five years from now the kids starting college are going to make these ones look tame and passive by comparison. The individual is taking back words and music and entertainment, by sheer force of numbers and an undeniable will. Its incredibly cool. Still, it makes me sad. It makes me feel like I was born just a few years too early. Like I'm a spectator, in a position to observe and comment, but not to have the experience myself. Oh well.
Exalted tonight. I'm psyched about that.
