[WEB4LIB] Re: "Generation shifts" and technology

[Thomas Bennett]

These are starting to sound like Exit Polls to me where Exit Polls only
show results of people willing to answer polls.  I think more accurately
the example shown below is that more young people use Friendster not
necessarily technology.  I expect you might find on Geneaology.com that
younger people aren't the majority users.  My father is in his 80s and
was using his CPM computer up until early to mid 1990s and then moved to
MS Windows.

  The duck to water point appears to be more accurate to me although
more people are getting an introduction to computers, in most places, at
an earlier age than I did.  I was intrigued in high school with the
first computer I saw, about 1973, which only had a paper output (no
monitor) and you could play chess on it.  Then wrote my first program on
a Timex Sinclair computer, not much larger than today's handhelds, in
BASIC in early to mid 1980s.

  The Meyers Briggs test would probably tell you more about people
relating to technology than age.  And MB would probably give you more of
an indication how deep into technology one might go, such as a
programmer as opposed to a computer graphics artist.

Thomas



On Thu, 2005-01-06 at 22:25, Chuck0 wrote:
> Sloan, Bernie wrote:
> 
> > In the earlier "Wikipedia" thread, Bill Drew seemed a little skeptical
> > about the "generation shift" concept.
> 
> > I guess my point is that every generation has members who take to
> > technology like a duck to water, and every generation has members who
> > aren't particularly technologically adept, and who couldn't care less
> > that they aren't.
> 
> This may be true of the older generations, but the younger generations 
> breathe technology. I'm 39 and happen to work mostly with younger 
> people. Take the Internet service Friendster as an example. I was 
> updating my profile yesterday and was thinking about the demographics of 
> the people who I know on that service. Most of those "friends" who use 
> it are in their teens and twenties. People in their 30s use it somewhat, 
> while it's hard to find anybody over the age of 45 on the service. 
> Perhaps older people see themselves as busy people with more important 
> things to do, but that doesn't stop older people from yammering away on 
> cell phones all the time.
> 
> And my 70-year-old mother refuses to touch a computer.
> 
> Chuck
>