I had a wonderful discussion about generational differences today about the term Early Adopters being Generation Y in regards to internet technology I thought I’d share:
I mentioned to my coworker Steve, who is a Baby Boomer, that I thought it mildly absurd that my generation is referred to as the “Early Adopters” of the internet because, in my mind, the true early adopters are the architects. The guys like Steve who were building computers the size of large file cabinets with 10k of memory… who thought “PCs” would be a fad… and who can remember the time of the punchcard computer.
I asked “wouldn’t your generation be the adopters because your generation is the architects?”; He agreed that we are indeed the First Adoptees instead of the Early Adopters we’re made out to be.
It was touching to see Steve reminisce about the days before he had a computer. My first computer was an Apple IIe, my first computer that was my very own: a 1st gen Strawberry iMac. His first computer… he built; Just like my dad. He spoke of transistors the size of the 1999 Nokia’s with the easy-change faceplates. It made me wonder…
What is it that our generation is going to look back on and reminisce about 30 years from now?
Currently I can’t fathom we’d look back at laptops and not have something similar… then again in 30 years we might have voice recognition software that transcribes to text spoken language so well that typing itself becomes functionally obsolescent…
I’m anxious to see and excited to be blessed enough to witness it all…
<3
