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Society is filled with generations of people who have different life experiences. We have the Baby Boomers, Gen X’s, Gen Y’s and now Gen C’s (Connected Generation). This mix of 
generations had different ways of communicating and sharing information over the years. Today, the common thread between our generations is communication and information sharing.
With the dawn of social media over the last decade, communication and information sharing has evolved at a rapid rate. Options have ranged from the increasingly less relevant use of email, to the more interactive Twitter, Skype, Google Hangouts, and Facebook. Depending on the service you can tie in text, videos, pictures, links, and live streams. These communication and information services, and many more not mentioned above, provide the ability to communicate and share information in real time.
It’s this real time ability that is now blending our generations into one I believe can be called the NOW Generation. What’s amazing about the NOW Generation is the amount and type of information being shared. Family members, educators, businesses, and government organizations are using technology to communicate and share general, important, vital, and emergency information to others all over the world. This is both fantastic and challenging.
The fantastic part of this ability to communicate and share information is that people are more connected than ever and have the ability identify and link to what they need to know in just seconds. The challenge is twofold. First the information needs to be relevant, timely and up-to-date. The second is that once we, as the NOW Generation, have experienced real time communication and sharing of information, we expect it, and we want it NOW. Therefore, the relevant question becomes how do we keep up?
So I thought why not make this blog post interactive and responsive. I ask you, my blog readers, these two questions and hope you will leave answers in the comments section:
- Are we the NOW Generation? Why or Why not?
- How do we encourage the use of technology for communication and sharing of information yet establish realistic expectations for when and how often we communicate and share information?
Please share your thoughts.
Excellent post Scott. I consider myself a technology enthusiast, advocate and proponent. I believe the explosion of technology and gaming industry has put us in a challenging position. Technology has the powerful capacity to allow us to communicate with others across the country and the world, but sadly, isolates us to the point where you walk in a room of 10 people and no one is talking (all locked in on their hand-helds, cell phones, laptops, ipads, etc.). Like everything else, education at home and in school in the proper use of technology will be the best indicator on whether we control it, or it controls us.
Scott this is a very good post. I also believe that we have students and adults that are turning into information NOW people. The expectations of having the information immediately, while understandable, has also created problems. Information needs to be vetted not just consumed. We need to teach people how to consume and validate the information and not just take the information as valid. This sometimes takes time to do.
Scott, I believe that we are most defiantly a NOW generation to the point that if people have to wait 10 seconds for something to load it causes impatience. As sharing continues to become easier, a set of social norms will be formed, just like with any other new technology in the past. I do think that this new technology will be more difficult because it changes much faster and is being used by so many more people then technologies of the past. I think/hope that we start to see more classes in middle and high school that will address the expectations and have digital citizenship be more then a corny lesson taught during home room. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Scott,
Being surrounded by technology means we need to do a lot of thinking and reflecting on its use and efficacy. Your post really adds to the conversation! It’s timely that I’m reading it now as I’m involved in my first MOOC (etmooc) which has an absolutely overwhelming information stream. The challenge for all participants is how to effectively learn in the environment. I’m trying.
Scott, excellent and thought provoking post. We are in a time of great change and flux. We are dealing with a time where expectations and desires for information NOW and immediate access, is starting to blend with our past understanding of patience and face-to-face conversation skills. A time when you searched for hours or even days for the information you wanted. While many from our generation are learning to be digital immigrants, we are also learning to understand the differences of our digital natives. How will things change in the age of instant access and the decreased need for slower, deeper relationship development…..or will we as a society discover that we all need to move back to slowing things down, and refocusing on the need for deeper relationships? I’m unsure of how things will evolve….but I am excited to be in “this time” in our history. We are in one of the biggest and most rapid eras of change in human history, and while it can be a turbulent ride….it is also very exciting.
On a personal and professional note, anyone reading and responding to your post now is the NOW generation. The NOW generation is not related to what decade we were born in, but rather our access and investment in the online tools. We need to remember a whole group of young people do not have ready access to all these tools; these are children who live in poverty or in areas with limited broadband access. Thus, it is hard to generalize and not stereotype. We cannot assume that every young child born today or those in the first or second generation of their lives are the NOW generation. On the other hand, an octogenarian might well be the NOW generation. I follow someone on Twitter who claims to be in her nineties. Whether she is or not, it raises the issue that the NOW generation does not coincide with the decade of one’s birth. Rather, it corresponds with acces and an interest in engaging with the tools.