Tapscott Pt. 1

I really like this book!  Our entire lives, my generation has been told that the internet and technology has made us worse-we don't really learn math anymore because we have calculators, we don't know how to spell because we have spell check and we can't find real information anymore because my generation looks to wikipedia instead of Britannica.  Tapscott tells us that this is ok, and in fact goes one step further, he talks about how my generation is changing the world.  He paints us in a positive light, saying we can change the world for better and not for worse.  The author also helps me understand a little better about why older people have the view they do, everyone's paradigms come from somewhere and while our generation cannot imagine a world without computers or the internet, our parents and grandparents had to learn to use the computer and the internet.  They were scared of it.

Tapscott really made me think when he talked about how his son went around to house saying that the refrigerator and the TV were technology as well.  It's true, but we don't think of them as technology because we've had them our whole lives.  To my generation, computers are not technology, they're established.  I can't remember the first time I used a computer.  The older generation can remember even Professor Arola remembers clearly-she told my class she was in college.  My parents majored in Computer Science before people had PCs in their house.  If you look around where you live, everything in your home is a technology.  When humanity began, we had nothing so we had to invent things to make the world better.  Computers and the internet happened to change the world in a big way, but so did phones, electricity, forks and everything else we use on a daily basis.

I also liked how he talked to Rahaf and she said part of the reason she changed careers was that she didn't like the hours she was working.  It's amazing to me how the internet allows people to break out of the 9 to 5 box that we've been raised to see.  That was one of the benefits of going into the field I chose when I changed my majors-I will most likely be working on projects that have a deadline but can often be done from home or not necessarily at regular office hours.

Overall, the first part of Grown Up Digital really made me think about my perspective and how lucky I am to have been born in this generation.