Layer 8

Oh look, a chicken!

Been spending several days bemused.  There are a few things I’ve never understood, but I think they’re starting to gel for me.

See if you can find the unifying theory behind these observations:

- I have never had the patience to sit in classes.  I’ve always needed to be doing at least one other thing to keep my mind occupied (usually, it was doing the homework for tomorrow).

- I hate most presentations.  Except ones that go at the speed of sound, like Hoff’s (does that man ever draw a breath?).  This is why I vastly prefer the hallway track at cons.

- I’ve been sitting in at least five presentations in the last two weeks in which the presenter went on and on about how “millennials” are different from “us” (meaning boomer executives), and how they need to multitask and need interactive learning and need social networking and all that shit.  I don’t understand how this is supposed to be new, because I’ve been multitasking and using these so-called “2.0 technologies” for more than 20 years (remember Usenet, folks?  And IRC’s been around for 17 years).  Does this mean that I’m secretly a millennial?  I don’t think so.

- Had a fascinating chat with Myrcurial about ADD and how it might apply to me.

- Read about NADD and realized that was SO me.

So put these all together, and here is my theory—which is mine—and what it is, too:

There are no “millennials.“  There are only young people who have a certain ADD-ish mindset who now have the advantage of technology that better meets their mental lifestyle.  I’m one of those people myself (okay, not young), who had the advantage of getting into it early before it spread to the rest of the world.

And the thing is, I KNOW I’m not alone.  I know this is not a case of a generational gap; there are plenty of 0Ld Sk00L hackers out there who are not fazed by this influx of technology and change in lifestyle either.  Hello?  Boomers INVENTED the Internet, you punks.  If I had a dollar for every gray-haired iPhone user, I’d be rich enough to buy one of my own.

Pundits are confusing the delay in technology spread with a change in a whole generation, and that’s just not the case.  Not every kid needs, wants or has a Wii to survive; they are not fundamentally psychologically different as humans.  It’s ridiculous to cite statistics that show that they’re reading less and less WHEN THEY’RE RECEIVING THOUSANDS OF EMAIL AND TEXT MESSAGES.  I’m getting really tired of listening to presentations by TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY EXECUTIVES who talk about all this stuff as if it just started in the year 2000.  They, of all people, ought to know better—unless they bought their way into their positions and don’t actually understand what they’re selling.

I don’t feel any different from millennials.  I don’t think they’re anything but young and naturally literate in the world they grew up in.  I don’t think they have a different view of privacy; they’re just making the same mistakes on the ‘net that I did 20 years ago, and in 20 years when they’re trying to land a board position they’ll be just as embarrassed as anyone else.  I don’t think they speak a different language.  They just have more learning and communicating choices than I did at that age, but you can bet that as soon as the choices came along, I adopted them too.  And so did a lot of other boomers and Gen Xers. 

Those of us who are naturally ADD-prone (can we call it something else?  Natural, compulsive multitaskers?) are just better supported these days in our particular style.  Let’s not turn this into an intergenerational crisis.  Either you’re adaptable, or you’re not, and if you’re not, you shouldn’t be running a corporation anyway.  Get with the program, and for chrissesake stop calling it 2.0.

(Oh—and one more thing.  I’ve finally realized that “security briefings for executives” are not actually briefings for security executives.  This explains why I want to throttle various security industry speakers.)
 

Posted by shrdlu on Wednesday, August 13, 2008
(2) Comments • Permalink •