Digital Generation, Part 94.
Like JP, I am privileged to have one foot in “the City” (Wall Street for North American readers) and one foot in “the Valley” (and am probably perceived as a bit of a black sheep in both.) I am also privileged to be Generation X, with one foot in the Baby Boomers’ world and one in the Digital Generation’s. And so I immediately saw the truth in his recent observation on how the rules of (social) engagement are so different in each. Which all too often leads to missed opportunities on both sides:
An aside. One way to understand the difference between the audience of yesterday and the audience of tomorrow is by looking at how Blackberries and Macs get used in the enterprise, at meetings and conferences. Yesterday’s generation look surreptitiously at their BlackBerries, pretending to pay attention to what is being said. For some strange reason, they think that no one will notice. Tomorrow’s generation, on the other hand, put their Macs on the table and use them to take notes, to look up references, to stay connected. And they pay attention to what is being said. While everyone else thinks they aren’t listening. So one generation pretends to listen, actually does something else, and goes around in the benighted belief that no one will notice. And the other generation pretends not to listen, knows how to multitask, and does all this in the open. Hmmmm.
I guess bridging this divide is really what I have been trying to do for the last few years and is a cornerstone of my new venture. I guess it comes down to seeing the lack of a public wi-fi network (and more importantly nobody except me even noticing let alone caring) at a major conference on financial technology as a glass half full…
