Grown Up Digital Pt 1

I can definitely relate to what Tapscott was pointing out in the first part of this book, the difference of generation and their relation to technology. Time and time again, the ‘millennial” generation and beyond wont know what it’s like to grow up without technology in their face basically all the time. reading through some possible days of other generations featured in the book, I wondered what it would’ve been like to live during those times. Sure it’s nice to have technology today to reach numerous people with a few buttons, but what if all of that was gone and we just had the landline and a television set. It was quite funny also relating to the things the author pointed out as ‘drawbacks’ for the current generation: they aren’t ‘physical world’ social, lack of attention, and weren’t as active as past generations. I didn’t relate exactly to all of them but I can see the difference of the amount of people that would rather chat online with their friends in the same town than actually see them face to face.

With that, sometimes you find yourself ‘bored’ and think of someone to ‘talk’ to so you text them asking what they are doing, how they are, or just something random to spark a conversation. This current generation has probably honed the ‘I can make a conversation last through simple phrases for hours’ and just keep it going and going without much real meaning behind it (that’s mostly from my experience though, some detest messaging conversations). The quick ‘how’re you?’ has seemed to become the closest meaningful somewhat face to face interaction as we can get when we are not in the same room, building, or area as someone else.

This can be useful for people who are far away from each other (say opposite ends of the world) than others goofing around sitting right next to each other. I find it somewhat foolish in others, but in any case I am also guilty of doing this. And so I am curious to how the future generations pan out with what we have created with our free time and how it will affect them. Compared to past generations we’ve become lazy and easily distracted, but if technology continues to grow as such, what will the future become?