I am in the Net Gen when I feel from the Boomers!
Don Tapscott’s text was particularly refreshing for me because what I have been listening in the school environment is a apocalyptic vision of the new generations. Teachers complain all the time about the difficulties to reach these hyperactive, deconcentrated and technological child. In this sense, what I have been listening is have being theorized in Mark Bauerline y Nicholas Carr. In very pedestrian words we could said that represent the idea that “it’s always best in the past”. I share with Tapscott that teachers must change the way that they have been making classes, they must perform classes centered in the students, where the the cooperation must be central when they plan the learning activities and in this way develop the great talents that new generations have.
But one of the things that I find particularly disturbing in the text of Tapscott is the generalizations that he made about the ages where the Net Generation began. I know that all the study is centered in North America, but was impossible not to contrast the difference between this specific point of view and the relation with technology-age in my country, particularly in all the little stories that were interspersed in the chapters where was reflected a specific way of living and I can only see this kind of behaviors in a very particular social class: the very rich one (only the 8% of my country).
In this sense I find more appropriated the description that appears in the introduction of Palfrey & Gasser’s book “Born Digital”: “This narrative is about those who wear earbuds of an iPod on the subway to their first job, not those of us who still remember how to operate a Sony Walkman or remember buying LPs or eight-track tapes.” (4) Here the most important characteristic of the definition is not the age but the things the people do with the technologies they have.
This, I think, is a key point because even if I could be considered as a part of the Net Generation according to Tapscott’s words, this “community” is not so extended in my country. There the materials and technologies are so expensive that just a small part of the population can access to this goods. In this sense, the more I was reading the article, more I felt part of the Boomer Generation in how they relate with technology (how much time I watched television when I was a child, the way I searched for YouTube videos, and how many times I posted in Facebook) than with Net Generation.
Therefore, I believe that the difference between generations are centered in the economic development and possibility of use of technologies in each country and not in the age of every person.