The Generation Gap in Technology

There has always been a generation gap in Technology. The younger generation has always been a little more comfortable with whatever the next big thing is. Don’t believe me? Spend some time with students and talk about technology. The first thing that will scare you is what they don’t even consider to be technology. They take iPods, laptops, and cell phones in stride. These are not really new and cool to them. These things aren’t even really tech to them, just a natural part of their lives.

I feel this gap, boy howdy do I feel it. I was born in 1960. So microwave ovens, personal computers, laptops, cell phones and iPods are all cool gadgets to me. The whole personal computer revolution took place since I was in high school. Steve Jobs isn’t even that much older than me. When I teach about the history of computers and a good portion of it took place in my lifetime, it makes me feel old.

When it comes to technology, I am just as dependent on these gadgets as my students are. I take them for granted. Too much. When our microwave oven stopped working this past week it was a major crisis. Forget to charge my cell phone? Ouch! Don’t even get me started about the garage door opener…

My daughters have never known a world where Dad didn’t have a Macintosh computer. They have always known how to use a mouse, a cd player, any gadget. We even broke down recently and got a broadband cable internet service provider, and digital telephone service. So they know what a router is too. They are on the net all the time. Which means we have to supervise that now too…

Recently my youngest came home and created a Powerpoint slide show all about herself for class. I teach this in my course in school so you would have thought she would have come to me for advice. Nope. She just up and did it. I only got to help with the saving and transferring stuff. Her teacher, who is stuck in an elementary classroom where they are using old PC’s the size of motor homes, told her to bring her project in on a floppy. She came home and asked me what a floppy was. When I explained that Macs didn’t have them anymore she went back to school and told her teacher that nobody used them anymore. I sent her to school with her project saved on a USB keychain drive.

But the age gap isn’t the only gap and it isn’t even the worst. The worst gap in any organization is the gap between the user/consumers and those who are in the management position where decisions are made about technology. This Generation Gap is between the older generation of technology and the Next Generation of technology. Don’t believe me? Answer these questions: Is your school network locked down so that you can’t do anything on your network? Can you even use the machine without a password? Do you have any say in how much storage you have on the network? Have you ever tried to open a web site that you thought was innocent and couldn’t because of a filter? Ever try to install a printer or other piece of hardware and couldn’t? Who makes these decisions? Is it the end-user? You know it isn’t. It’s “them.”

Almost all organizations, school or otherwise, use security as the excuse to diminish the functionality of the machines we use. Maybe they have good reason. I’m sure they do on Windows networks. But those of us who use the computers every day, are annoyed. We want a computer system that is robust, that is still useful and secure at the same time. Do security and efficiency have to be mutually exclusive?

I’m pretty sensitive to this because my school district is changing from the Macintosh platform to the PC platform. I still use my Macintosh Powerbook for everything but I teach on a Windows 2000 network. About once a week someone comes to me to solve a problem that they cannot handle with a PC. I always brag when the Mac comes to the rescue.

It is especially difficult if you are one of those Early Adopters of Technology. You know who you are. You don’t just have a USB drive, yours is one of those Tiki ones with the light up eyes. You have twice the RAM that anyone you know has. You usually have the next new thing before anybody else has it. If your organization is slow to adopt any new tech, you are in pure pain. “We’ll need to have a committee study that,” are words you hear all too often. Hang in there, you are still a good person.

It’s hard to be cutting edge when you are always being beat down by “the man”…