An excellent definition of the Digital Generation
From a bright new* star in the blogosphere, JP Rangaswami (*well he’s not exactly new to the blogosphere but he finally! has his own soapbox…), an excellent description of the Digital Generation that is one of the key pillars of my paradigm:
What inverted? The age of the early adopter changed, which moved startlingly from 35-40 years old towards 12-21 years old. When you look at mobile phones, texting, instant messaging, downloads, Skype, the iPod and iTunes phenomena, multifunction devices, the standards for these are all set by youth. And this trend is now moving towards changing the functionality of “established” web firms such as Google and Amazon, eBay and Yahoo.
It was this shift, when youth became the early adopters, which signalled a real change from institutional to individual capitalism; not having been exposed to how organisations worked and not caring about how governments operated, youth began to set the agenda.
Peer respect became more important than the power of hierarchical authority; relationships and trust returned to prominence after a long time in the wilderness; there were no longer any taboos about asking why things were the way they were, and challenging the status quo.
Today is their Sixties. And, in a vicarious way, ours too; The Age of the Individual.
Empowered and free from hierarchy, jealous about personal time, keen on relationships and trust, inquisitive about values and ethics, with the power of the web to change their perceptions of time and distance and organisations and government.
Read the whole post here. Inspired by this I have created a wikipedia entry for the Digital Generation.
