I war born in 1978, so I'm not quite a millenial, but I don't particularly identify with gen X either (especially because most of them were already over 30 by t

I war born in 1978, so I'm not quite a millenial, but I don't particularly identify with gen X either (especially because most of them were already over 30 by the time I graduated high school!). I also am Brazilian-American, so I grew up in both the First World _and_ Third World. In a sense I guess I straddle in both dimensions you cite. While the availability of technology in the US was a huge advantage, it's not like I was surrounded by tech pioneers. Remember, the tech world was much smaller in the 80s, the PC revolution was still very much a hobbyist/office thing until the web went mainstream in the 90s. I feel like I was drawn to computers out of the meager availability to me and nothing was going to keep me away from them. It was not really supported by my parents, and getting information was incredibly difficult. Eventually once my friend got a modem and we were able to get into the BBS scene and find some user groups then things loosened up a bit and the knowledge started to come (but still 100 times harder than it is today with the technical information available online). I feel like those user groups were like oases of tiny groups of computer enthusiasts among tens of thousands of "normals" who might suffer a computer at work, but had absolutely no interest in knowing anything about it. I suspect the ratio of passionate computer geeks is similar, except now computers are so powerful and useful that people are drawn into the industry for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with genuine curiosity/obsession with how they work.