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#81
09-29-2007, 01:30 PM
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Re: My Generation
[ QUOTE ]
I'm just curious as to how "the most" would be defined. I'd love for a less than completely trivial definition. [/ QUOTE ] Upon reflection, I don't think it is "the most" that needs defining so much as "technology." What I referred to was computing and communications technology. To attempt an analogy with an older technology, the car was first intended as a tool. In fact, Henry Ford's first products were farm tractors. But as cars became cheaper and more available, they transformed from objects intended to end the farmer's drudgery into toy that precipitated many things, among which, as alluded to above, was the emancipation of generations. So when I say the the younger generation will do the most with it, I mean that they will take it far beyond its originally intended (and foreseen) use. 
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#82
09-29-2007, 01:44 PM
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Re: My Generation
It is interesting to see the different attitudes the generations have. I've always thought that the reason people my age are more effective and more comfortable with the internet (arguable?) is because we take it much less seriously.
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#83
09-29-2007, 03:04 PM
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Re: My Generation
Older people find it much harder to learn new stuff, too, that's out of their field. That can start happening even in the 30's, and by the 40's is locked in pretty good. I guess I think of it a little like riding horses. If you grew up doing it, everything about it is as natural as can be, and you're better than you'd think. If you didn't, it's intimidating and you may be pretty bad at it for a very long time, if not forever. Except imagine trying to learn to ride a horse if you're also slightly retarded.
Seriously though, I've taught software to a lot of people, and taking it less seriously is definitely a huge help in learning. The number one thing that keeps a lot of people from learning elementary computer and software use is being too intimidated and lacking self-confidence. A lot of people are so put off by it that they can't allow themselves a mistake without crushing their own egos with it. And the best way to learn a software program is, with a little guidance here and there, to find some aspect of it you're interested in, and then just play around making mistakes, and not taking it seriously.
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#85
10-01-2007, 05:46 PM
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Re: My Generation
[ QUOTE ]
Oh - one more drawback to your generation -- none of you can drive a standard. [/ QUOTE ] I haven't, but I feel as though I could, after all these video games.
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#87
10-01-2007, 06:55 PM
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Re: My Generation
[ QUOTE ]
Oh - one more drawback to your generation -- none of you can drive a standard. [/ QUOTE ] This strikes me as really hard to believe. It used to be only pussies, women, and old people drove automatics. A standard is far too useful and fun to make an automatic appealing to the hairy-chested men of old. Then again, I never thought that there would be a word like metrosexual.
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#88
10-01-2007, 07:09 PM
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Re: My Generation
[ QUOTE ]
Oh - one more drawback to your generation -- none of you can drive a standard. [/ QUOTE ] I can, (I'm 18) but of course I haven't driven standards as often as previous generations when it was the only (or more prevalent) option. Maybe it's just the area I grew up in, but there were a large number of "car guys" around and whenever someone would get a new car one of the first questions always was "is it a standard?" Standards were also held in higher esteem than automatics for the most part. Also, this generation seems to all want the high performance european cars which, for the most part, only come as standards. I guess a lot of people will be learning if they make enough money. I've noticed Blarg mention how little this generation reads and I am unsure how to approach the comment. It's clear that we read fewer novels, but reading The Lounge threads is still reading and there is knowledge to be gained from it. When a topic comes up that we want to know more about, we go to google/wiki/the internet and read about it. Of course these articles are shorter and cannot always be completely trusted but the same criticalness that we apply to these articles should be applied to books as well. This also exposes us to a much wider range of "authors" in that many who previously had very few outlets to express themselves due to the difficulty of getting in print now have open forums to put their ideas out there. I think that has led to another advantage that the internet has given us in that we have always been told to not trust everything you read since it is much more difficult to determine the credibility of the author whereas before, I believe, many were less critical of books since they believed the credibility had previously been determined since it was in print.
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#89
10-01-2007, 08:19 PM
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Re: My Generation
[ QUOTE ]
I think that has led to another advantage that the internet has given us in that we have always been told to not trust everything you read since it is much more difficult to determine the credibility of the author whereas before, I believe, many were less critical of books since they believed the credibility had previously been determined since it was in print. [/ QUOTE ] I'm not sure if I agree with you on the last point for two reasons. The first being that young people seem just as gullible in a lot of ways, and sometimes even more so than older folks. Example: Every news story on a new medical study tends to get repeated as if it were not only fully reliable but the very last possible word on a medical matter. After you've seen theories come and go enough, this seems completely silly, but I see it quite a bit these days among the younger crowd, on and off the boards. The second reason is that -- and this is actually a problem extending back a generation or two -- much of what is called knowledge is not really knowledge at all, but parrotting of unexamined sources in the first place. Wiki is an example, but it's the same in academia, where fewer people do primary reading and research, and instead cleave to secondary sources or far less reliable sources than that. (Talk radio, anyone?) This is the case in the general public as well, it seems to me. I read and talk to people who have very strong, even quite proudly inflexible and ingenuous opinions "about" Hemingway, Freud, Marx, the Founding Fathers, Nietzsche, Existentialism, classic films, foreign films, fighting arts, you name it really -- but have never read, seen, or participated in the stated works and activities themselves. So now there is much more judging going on at ever greater remove -- and most of this stuff isn't really all that old and is still a common referent in discussions. Some of it's even reasonably readable and fun. You get a constant recycling of other people's opinions that by definition involves far greater credulity (and lack of intellectual integrity, and laziness) than does someone reading, viewing, and participating in the real thing and making his judgments from there. Checking out the source and drawing one's own conclusions also strikes me as relatively fearless in comparison to recycling other opinions, and far less foolish and vain. Again, this isn't a problem just with this generation, but it just seems to be that our culture in general is getting pretty lazy. We still want to have opinions, but we often don't want to really earn them by digging very deep. I like my passion a little more authentic than regurgitated, I guess. I often find myself losing respect for people in political arguments, for example, not just because they engage in political argument, although that's usually perilously close to sealing the deal for me all by itself, but because it quickly becomes apparent that they have little or no knowledge about the basic facts and factors upon which they form opinions they are willing to press mightily and pridefully upon others. And it then again -- Gadzooks! -- quite often quickly becomes apparent that they are not even forming original opinions either, but parroting someone who himself probably parrotted a handful of other parrots in turn. To tell you the truth, when I hear men discussing politics, that's often when I walk over to the women and listen to gossip. At least their baloney, no matter how bad, is a little more fun. And I think a lot of people kid themselves that their political discussions are any deeper, better informed, and less purely spiteful than gossip.
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#90
10-01-2007, 08:49 PM
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Re: My Generation
That's true, Blarg. On the other hand, we have snopes, we have bloggers fact-checking every kind of public statement (and each other), and we have every incident of note caught on video and analyzed for years.
So, yes, the average person is as unthinking as ever, maybe more, but at the extremes we have people who slave over specific topics the way monks did centuries ago, and this time these people are connected by the Internet. This means they improve by sharing their work with others, and it means you and I can benefit from it. Politics is painful, I'm with ya there. With a few very notable exceptions, it's a certainty that I'll have to downgrade my rating of someone's reasoning abilities when I hear him discuss politics for the first time. I just don't know if it was ever any better.
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