Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Growing Up With Google
In her article, Growing Up With Google, Dr. Oblinger describes a generation that grew up with the internet and how that has shaped their psyches. These net genners as they are called have, among other things, a high need to communicate and collaborate--and not just one on one. She goes on to describe what impact this has for education. Being I am in a Corporate environment, I see it also having a huge impact to the Corporate world as these net genners enter the work force. In our Company, we rely very heavily on email and the telephone for communications (and a smattering of IM). The net genners; however, rely much more heavily on IM and social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook. I can foresee generational issues with communications--especially in team project situations. We have been trying for several years to increase the use of collaborative tools--primarily Sharepoint--with very little luck. I would imagine the net genners would find it both incomprehensible and frustrating to encounter such resistance toward technological collaboration. I foresee a lot of learning happening in the next several years.
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3 comments:
Great article and good synopsis of it. In a recent article by Susan Herring regarding the "Internet Generation," Herring argues that this generation is actually not the net gen as is normally accepted, but is a precursor of it. Her premise is that although this generation has grown up with the internet they have not grown up with adults who view their "Tech savvy" activities as normal. Kids have an awareness that adults think of them as tech savvy, and this gives them a dual view of themselves that impacts their own view of the world. In the near future, the world will view what is now "Tech savvy" activity (i.e. blogging, podcasting, IM, mobile technologies) as completely normal activities even for adults, and at that point we will see the real impact of a generation that grows up taking Google truly for granted ("Was there a time before Google Mommy?). How will this impact the corporate world, and how will the presently named net genners feel about their own past tech savvy ways at that time?
Hi,
I'm a student in Dr. Bonk's class. The article is a good reflection of the young generation and their lifestyle. They have grown up together with the internet development and viewing this technology as the normal things. Therefore, their communication channels somehow differ from the past such as using telegraph or telex (not sure if these still exist in the US). Nowadays, The current tools for coomunication (including CSCW) have been developed and hence cause some problems or inconvenience in some ways, I believe it would become very basic infrastructure for all of us in the near future. For example, I also used Sharepoint as the collaborating tool in education for the past three years, at that time, we were having lots of problems and so much frustrated. When time passed by, I have seen some improvements and hope it could even be made better in order to accommodate our needs.
emily --
great perspective on the net gens and the impact of the noncohorts on their own self image. I wonder, though, if any generation's tech savvy nature is considered "normal" by the parent generation. After all, the net genners parents were tech savvy about TV and telephone and other things that their parents found strange and, possibly, horrible. It seems to me that 'tech savvy' changes for each generation as technology itself changes. Maybe, as the increase in change increases at a fast enough rate, no generation will have a technology they consider unique to just them and, therefore, it will be considered 'normal' by their noncohorts.
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