CHAPTER 11 The Digital Umbilical Cord
Professor Mary Quigley
Are Millennials misunderstood? They have been branded lazy, entitled, disloyal, tech-addicted social morons — but has it been too easy to plaster judgement over a generation who are only now settling into adulthood?
To understand Gen Y, consider their obsession with technology not as an addiction, but simply as the process by which they discover, understand and experience the world around them. Author Douglas Adams perhaps put it best:
I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
- Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
- Anything that’s invented between when you’re 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
- Anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things.
Gen Y never needed directions to get to where they were going; thanks to GPS, all they needed was an address. They have never really needed to go to their friend's house so they could study together, because Gchat and Facebook group messages allowed them share their assignments online. They find the CD player in their ...
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