5 ms·

We Gen-Xers are the original digital natives. I grew up with early 8-bit computers, moving to 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit. My original 286/386 PCs got tinkered so

We Gen-Xers are the original digital natives. I grew up with early 8-bit computers, moving to 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit. My original 286/386 PCs got tinkered so much I didn't bother putting the case cover back on. My desk was a mess of serial cables, MIDI cables, speaker and headphone cables. My "Internet" was dialed through manual Hayes modem commands and later required starting Trumpet Winsock. I spent hours squeezing 10K out of my DOS low memory for games or Win 3.1. I had to partition my multiple drives, get more HDD space using Stacker and worry about FAT16/FAT32. I had to worry about 16-bit compatibility in Windows and DirectX minor versions. Now some jerk comes and tells me I can't use some slow and ridiculous browser-based software? Gimme a break. My teenager can't sneeze without checking how to do it on YouTube.

aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> We Gen-Xers are the original digital natives. I had this kind of discussion with people who make good money managing digitalization projects. Under the term "digitalization" (somewhat confusingly) companies understand "make (often service) X available via the internet". Similarly "digital" means "connected to the internet" (i.e. punchcards are not digital :-) ). This is a different usage of these terms than in engineering, but this usage is rather consistent. The term "natives" in "digital natives" refers to the fact that this is the first generation for which (rather consistently available) internet was something that they grew up with from very early childhood on, i.e. they "never saw the 'old world without consistently available internet' in their life". Whether this is bad or worse for work can be discussed endlessly ... ;-) In this sense/usage, from my gut feeling I would thus argue that "digital natives" refers to "from late Gen Y on".

aleph_minus_one 3y ago

> We Gen-Xers are the original digital natives. I had this kind of discussion with people who make good money managing digitalization projects. Under the term "digitalization" (somewhat confusingly) companies understand "make (often service) X available via the internet". Similarly "digital" means "connected to the internet" (i.e. punchcards are not digital :-) ). This is a different usage of these terms than in engineering, but this usage is rather consistent. The term "natives" in "digital natives" refers to the fact that this is the first generation for which (rather consistently available) internet was something that they grew up with from very early childhood on, i.e. they "never saw the 'old world without consistently available internet' in their life". Whether this is bad or worse for work can be discussed endlessly ... ;-) In this sense/usage, from my gut feeling I would thus argue that "digital natives" refers to "from late Gen Y on".