thoughts on the generational digital divide...

There are many divisions at play in the so-called Digital Divide: geographic, generational, economic, racial, and so on. I've been fortunate that I've mostly ended up on the "connected" side of the fence in all of these categories, and after this week's discussions and readings on the Digital Divide, I've been thinking about how certain points in my own childhood were defined by my ability to access technological resources, namely the internet.

For example, I remember in 1992, (when I was a fourth-grader) having a pen pal from London who I corresponded with via faxes. By '94 I was using the closed-network version of America On-line that Bob Bocher mentioned in his presentation, via dial-up in rural West Virginia. My friend in London used her mom's university email account. By the next year we were arranging meeting times in chatrooms on AOL, a service my British friend even had access to by then. Once I hit middle and high school, the internet was a key resource in my life for not only socializing, but also for downloading music, writing papers, choosing a college, etc. Of course, this influence was probably true for many of us Generation Y-ers.

The internet has clearly played a similar role in the lives of many other people from my generation, which has been aptly nicknamed the "Net Generation." And much has been written about the Net Generation's relationship with the virtual world, including a lot of discussion focusing on the divide between Gen. Y and older generations. I found this article about how Gen. Y employees demand high-tech communication technologies to thrive in the workplace.

I have observed a generational divide at my current job, for sure. In fact, many resources are allocated at my job for the purpose of bridging it, including several computer training courses that are mostly designed for beginner-level computer users, as well as efforts to accommodate older employees' preferences for outdated software. As a Generation Y-er, I find the pace of these classes painstakingly slow, but I also appreciate the need for them.

How much of an advantage do digital natives have in the workplace of the 21st Century? A lot, I think. There's no doubt that those who've grown up with computers and the internet are simply fast and efficient at navigating a computer's files or searching for something on-line; it's second nature to them. However, I think people who didn't grow up with computers and who weren't the computer techies of the 80s and 90s are quickly catching up. Really, it doesn't take too much practice before you can master those basic computer tasks, and the internet is no longer a new thing for most people. Still, you can't always teach old dogs new tricks. My babyboomer boss still insists on keeping a paper copy of the phone book around the office, while (of course) my first instinct is to Google it.