Some call it the iPod generation, which I hate, others call it the net generation, which I kind of like, and some call it the entitlement generation, which is hilarious.
I am pretty sure I am a part of this generation, but I get this surreal feeling when people talk about it. Like I am in a history exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute, but I’m still alive behind the glass!
Facebook, blogs, YouTube, WoW, and all sorts of instant gratification are all apart of what makes up our contemporary culture.
So where have people been talking about us? I have compiled a short list of places I have been noticing this.
1) Straight up anthropology/sociology
People are intrinsically interested in how cultures and societies work. And this “net generation” is no different.
How are people using Facebook and Myspace? What needs are being filled?
Are people of different races, classes or genders using these new technologies differently than each other?
More and more people are interested in us in a very anthropological type of way.
(As an aside, it’s weird to talk about oneself in the third person. It’s kind of like the royal “we”. The royal “one”.)
2) Marketing companies/classes
In order to get people to buy your products, you need to know what they like, what they do, when they do it, how they do it, etc.
The current problem is that marketers are from the generation or half generation above our generation. Though many have successfully grasped technologies like Facebook and YouTube, a very small number use it in the same way. Those who do are not using it to the same degree (amount).
I thought this was the craziest thing. A group of students from my marketing class in fourth year were chosen to explain how they used social networking sites (Facebook, Myspace, etc.) They later gave the same presentation to our marketing class.
It was a very attractive presentation and they spoke well. The content itself though was nothing shocking or even new. The crazy part?
The marketers were shocked.
They didn’t know the extent to which people check facebook, how often people check their emails, how many tasks people are performing at once, and the list goes on. This insight into this current generation was like aural gold to this company.
Weirder still is the idea that the “average person” can bring so much knowledge to a whole area of sales.
3) Education conferences
Teaching people is a lot like marketing in that you have to appeal to the students’ (customers’) sense of what is novel, interesting or worthwhile.
To teach effectively, you must also know how students are accessing content, and how they learn. The nature of knowledge acquisition has changed so much over time. Although many people of this generation still read a lot of books, this is by far not the main mode of learning.
I have this running joke with many of my friends when we don’t know something. I’ll give you a hint, the possible solutions end with “ikipedia” or “oogle”.
The speed and convenience is unbeatable. Sure something of reliability is lost in getting everything on the internet, but 99% of what we are asking about is uncontested knowledge. Like who was in Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. (BTW, no one you know. Ooh, except for Ice-T.)
And don’t even get me started about the prospects of iPhones in… anywhere.
The injustice is that educators are not under pressure to change, because it is the students who suffer if the educators don’t meet the students’ needs.
(image by keeping it real via flickr)
[tags]culture, technology, anthropology, ipod generation, net geneation, marketing[/tags]
Subscribe via RSS
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Your second point reminds me of Juno (the movie). I never got attached to any of the characters because they didn’t seem like anybody I know, but rather, like what a middle aged person thinks people my age sound like. When was the last time someone you know said “He’s the cheese to my macaroni”? No one I know even calls it mac and cheese, but rather KD (although this might just be a Canadian thing). The bottom line is that Juno kinda sucked.
The website has gotten a lot better Josh, good job, I like the written entries complemented by twice weekly audios. Good combo. Although I noticed your last entry was 1:22… pad those eight secs with more music, like they do in Zero Punctuation.
About the podcast lengths, you aren’t going to be happy next week as all of them are 3-5 seconds over. I just couldn’t bear to cut anything else out. But I will start padding things with music if i’m under.
I agree about movies when you get that wierd distant feeling or the feeling that you are being belittled. However, as much as it doesn’t pain me to say it, there are some pretty dumb people around.
I liked Juno, but not for the reasons everyone else did. I liked the weird relationship between Juno and the man–I’ve forgotten his name. Also there is this one line that people didn’t seem to notice, when Juno’s blonde friend says in an exclamatory way, “Oh Phuket, Thailand, when she finds out that Juno is pregnant.
I laughed out loud.
Oh and KD is a Canadian thing. American boxes actually say Macaroni and Cheese. This causes some difficulties in North American product marketing.
Another thing we hear often is the idea of email/texting culture degrading or bastardizing language.
As I was reading P.G. Wodehouse last week I was thinking about texting language as a modern equivalent to the language used in telegrams - while I’m sure folks in the 1920s didn’t include words like “NEwayz”, the sentiment about an economy of words is the same, only with a little less (or perhaps a modern-context-specific sense of?) decorum.
Hmm, I like that analogy. I think in that case it’s a product of who’s using the technology. Since telegrams cost money, you would have to be a little older/affluent to use it. While email and text messages are free to children (parents are paying for it, likely), so their communication reflects that.
Incidentally, b00bies.