The Young and the Restless

Do You Speak "Digital?"

As the first decade of the new millennium nears its conclusion, children in the developed world who never knew a non-digital life are maturing and entering the workforce. To them, broadband is nothing special. To them, being unconnected for even a moment is unthinkable, regardless of location.

So different is the perspective of this new generation from prior generations, it's as if they speak a different language. At best, adults who came of age before personal computers (or even before the internet) can adapt, but they will never see the world the same as those who grew up immersed in digital technology, just as someone who learns a foreign language will never speak as well as a native speaker.

That difference in perspective when it comes to digital policy is the nature of the gap between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. While any generalization such as this is prone to errors and abuse (all members of one generation are not alike, for instance), it does have value in describing a general trend and the potential implications.

That Was Then

Political leaders in the US today grew up in a different world. The average age of members in the US Senate is 62, and with leadership based on seniority, many committee chairmen are over 70.

The average age of members of the U.S. Senate is older than it has ever been, according to Senate Historian Richard Baker. For many senators, advanced age is starting to show, raising questions about their ability to govern. Health Problems Pose Governing Challenge

So the "old men of computing," inventors of the Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Office, and the World Wide Web, were all born in 1955, a year when the "old men of politics," our national political leadership, were graduating from high school, slide rules in hand.

Back when our senators graduated high school:
* Computers ran mostly on vacuum tubes - very expensive large mainframes that required highly skilled operators - there was no such thing as a PC or Mac, much less a laptop or a tablet PC;
* The IBM electric typewriter was fantastic! - but there was no such thing as a word processor;
* Copies were made with carbon paper - "carbon copies," where we get the "cc" on memos and emails - there was no such thing as a Xerox copy, much less an Inkjet or Laser printer;
* AT&T was it when it came to telephones - there was no competition in telecom;
* Telecommunication networks were about telephones and voice - there was no such thing as the internet;
* Long distance was expensive - there was no such thing as a rate plan that included no-charge long-distance;
* A pay phone was how one stayed connected when one was away from the home or office - there was no such thing as a cell phone, a ring tone, or even a pager;
* TV sets had rabbit ear antennae, or aerials on the roof - Cable TV was not around;
* Broadcast TV shows and movies were the two video options, and TV programming occupied only a few channels for a few hours a day (and if you missed something, there was no such thing as Rewind or Fast Forward) nor were there VCRs, DVRs, DVDs, VHS or Beta, or CDs, Gameboys, XBox, or PlayStations for that matter;
* Radios stood in the living room or were in the car, or if you were lucky, you had one of the new portable transistor radios, there was no such thing as a Walkman, a Boom box, a CD player, an iPod, much less an iPhone;
* Secretaries took dictation using Gregg shorthand, execs used a Dictaphone, and people mailed letters and cards ("snail mail" today), or sent a telegram - there was no such thing as eMail, instant messaging, or text messaging.

This list could go on and on - the point is that life was very different, just a short two generations ago, different in many ways ... the world has changed immeasurably in the past 50 years, and in big chunks, decade by decade. The really big digital impacts didn't even begin until 25 years ago, when our leaders were well into their 40s.

The world of the last century is gone forever, but many who vote continue to elect leadership that looks backward instead of to the future. Many of those who resist change and deny its significance either don't understand it fully, underestimate its impacts, or simply resent the pace of change.

As younger people begin to get politically active, they offset the votes of their older parents and grandparents. As those who value technology stand up in the political process to demand technological sophistication from their leaders, we can hope to begin to see informed lawmaking in Washington, DC. TechPresident is a website helpful for tracking the twin issues of technology and the presidential race.

But until the day arrives that our national political leaders are well versed in technology, federal government will lag progressive local governments, where younger people in select communities have a more immediate, louder voice for political leadership.

This Is Now
In contrast to the older generations described in the previous section, young people today view digital technology and culture as the norm, rather than the exception. It is quite normal to use a PC, laptop, gaming device, MP3 player, cell phone – not just daily, but hourly.

Kids send text messages to their friends hourly (or more often than that). They view email as "old fashioned." They use social networking websites like MySpace and facebook as a way of staying connected. Given a choice, they would rather have their cable TV service cut off than their broadband internet account.

The 2008 presidential contest demonstrates this digital generation gap. Just compare the two candidates and campaigns. Young people have flocked to the Obama campaign, for instance, accessing the campaign website to get involved (the website is an example of optimal leveraging of digital connectivity).

In contrast, John McCain, a generation removed from Barack Obama, recently admitted that he does not even use a PC or the internet personally, but relies on his wife to stay connected. The McCain campaign website, while improved, remains dramatically less developed to reflect new digital tools like MySpace and facebook.

Digital Adolescents Stuck in Digital Puberty

As a society, we're like confused teenagers beset with hormones when it comes to digital issues. We need to learn to live in a new mode, but for now, we're stuck in a Digital Adolescence, between the analog childhood that to which we had grown so accustomed - predictable, relatively slow, high touch - and the digital adulthood that is now a fact of life and that we know deep down is our destiny - forever changing, fast-paced, hard, technology-based.

When did this happen to us? We had a long, slow run up with the Rise of Computers from the 1960s through the 1980s, then we crossed the Rubicon sometime around 1995. (Some may argue that we're still in an Information Age, but the Internet marked a significant disruptive transition from the Information Age to the Network Age.) Being connected is distinctly different from being dependent on information.

Since the Rise of the Internet a little over 10 years ago, we've experienced many different attitudes, but mostly we've been collectively in denial as the internet matures and grinds away at our institutions.

For many, if not most in society, these changes lie under the surface, unrecognized, subliminal. But they affect us all, nevertheless, and we see more and more evidence of change, and the need to adjust, if we just open our eyes. Once you've had this realization, it's hard not to notice the evidence all around.

The significant changes associated with transitioning from Analog to Digital, from stand-alone to connected, from fixed to mobile, constitute one of the biggest challenges our society faces today.

Adjusting to change has to be one of the hardest things to do in life, yet we all have to do it as we age, so it's one of the most universal of themes. As societies go, adjusting to change can be seen as a barometer of health: healthy societies adjust, less healthy ones don't. The least healthy societies get stuck and close themselves off from any outside influence in order to stay the same: just think of Cuba and North Korea.

Change and Grief

Recognizing this state of Digital Puberty that we've entered is not unlike going through the five stages of grief in the Kubler-Ross model, because such significant change involves a death and a rebirth. In the end, allowing oneself to be reborn, to reemerge from the process of change, involves accepting the death of the previous state. Until then, one remains stuck.

Kubler-Ross, a psychologist who studied the reactions of those who had been diagnosed with mortal illnesses, developed a model that has since been widely applied to a variety of catastrophic personal loss situations (job, income, freedom).

Since this model gained widespread acceptance, we've gained a better understanding of how people deal with change and its accompanying loss. Some claim that any significant personal change can elicit these stages as a reaction. Change, even positive change, demands a response, and as change can often be seen as a threat, responses to change are not always positive.

When it comes to technology change, we initially tend to deny that a change is all that significant. But as the years pass, companies rise and fall, and society changes.

Who can argue that we are not a significantly different society than we were 10 years ago, a mere blink of an eye when it comes to history? Just one decade ago, who had even heard of broadband, of Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, etc., etc., etc.?

Recognizing changes and doing something about them is not easy. We have all kinds of terms for those who fail to grow up, from the "Peter Pan Syndrome" to the more recent "Failure to Launch."

Part of the challenge in dealing with such radical change comes from a lack of leadership. When we have leaders who look back instead of looking forward, as a society we're hamstrung.

We become stuck in distracting and unproductive debates that stall any progress and divert our energies from adjusting to change to preserving the status quo.

We persist in acting like rebellious teenagers, holding on to our childish ways in the face of change, denying the need to accept our progress into an adult world of hard decisions and consequences.

Communication, or the inability to communicate, is a major theme in how a society adjusts to change.

Parents struggle with change every day. Parents the world over share a common bond: wanting the best for their children. Parents struggle against the vagaries of fate that threaten their children.

Education is the Key

Because we all care about our children, we are more willing as a society to spend for our children, especially when it comes to education. Accepting the burden of educating their young ones, for the future of the society and the economy, has become a sign of a modern society.

In the realm of metropolitan broadband, the intersection of municipal government and the university community, as well as the larger city community life and the secondary education system are the keys to engineering dramatic changes related to technology. And as an added bonus, the K-12 and higher education environments offer ready access to the younger generations who embrace technological change.

Marc Prensky is an education consultant who challenges traditional education methods, stressing the opportunity to incorporate digital gaming for learning. Prensky also references the terms Digital Natives (Baby Boomers and older) and Digital Immigrants (Children of Boomers) described at the beginning of this article.

There is a crying need for leaders to start acknowledging the dramatically different perspectives we have on technology and society, especially considering the options we choose to educate our youth, and methods we choose to improve our situation.

Many secondary schools are still slow, distressingly so, to adapt to the trend of incorporating digital tools. Still relying on textbooks that quickly go out of date, these schools lament budget shortfalls but do not consider digital alternatives that offer more relevance to digital lifestyle perspectives, more flexibility for information management, and lower total cost of ownership.

Technology is dramatically changing everything, including how we can or should educate our youth. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson is a book that is chock-full of good information and references regarding the potential uses of technology in the classroom.

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams also does a good job describing and investigating the societal impact of technology changes.

A digital transition through a community-based metropolitan broadband network project may start off as an innovative way for citizens to get city services more efficiently and to make broadband access more affordable.
But as the project progresses, it morphs to address the goals of public education. It provides new, more effective and affordable ways to teach the children in a society. It enables them to learn in ways that they enjoy more.

One hundred years ago, earlier generations were inspired to donate land and create land-grant universities, to ensure that future generations would have the education they needed to build a modern lifestyle and sustain a healthy economy.

In that sense, digital transitions and metropolitan broadband networks may be but one more step on a well worn path, where the young and the restless focus the efforts of society on our society's youth, for the sake of all in our society and for a better future.

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