[pinaceae]

you're seriously too young to understand. i am 32 years old. the first time i went online was in 1999. before that i had personal computers, yes. but no internet whatsoever. can you even imagine a world without google and wikipedia?

i got my first mobile phone in that time frame.

my parents were born after ww2. your time as a youth shapes you, forms your understanding of the world. you translate everything you see into analogies of the past. a mobile phone is a like a normal phone without a cord. easy. but wrong for the generation that grew up with mobile phones.

my parents grew up with black and white tv. literally no computers in sight, anywhere. they got engineering diplomas while only utilizing a calculator (high tech for their time!) and pen and paper.

the majority of people (aka normal people) who where adults before 1985 do not "get" this new world the way you do. the outliers who build microsoft even didn't get it at first.

[rickmb]

I don't believe that for a second.

I'm 45 years old. My parents were born during ww2. I grew up with black and white tv (okay, partly because we couldn't afford color yet...). But my dad, an unskilled immigrant, ran IT companies for most of his life, and my mother, well into her 60's, got an iPad before I did. Hell, she was on Skype when I still had a landline... She even owns a friggin' Wii.

If there are people who don't seem to "get" this new world, it's not because because they are uneducated (both my parents' education ended with highschool) or because they are "old". It's because they don't want it. They've seen more change during their lifetime than you can imagine, some it they supported (or even made happen), some of it they were against. They're perfectly capable of dealing with changing times.

These politicians see a change that erodes their power and gives it to the people, and they simply don't want that to happen. That's why they belittle us by calling us "nerds", because they consider us a threat, not because they don't "get" it.

They get it quite well, thankyouverymuch, which is exactly why they say what they say and do what they do.

[keithpeter]

I'm 53, my parents were teenagers before the end of the European second world war. My Dad would have loved all this stuff. My mum's best friend was a telex operator in a large shipping company the 1950s and they had this thing called operator net. Facebook for 20something sweater girls, it sounds a hoot.

Here is my thought: the Internet (e.g. the IP/TCP protocols and http) can support either large centralised systems (Facebook, Google++, Twitter &c) or atomised individual 'presences' (shivaplug server next to your router and rss as microblogging tool). I suspect we are going in the centralised direction, and that our various governments are happy with that...

[bh42222]

You are all right!

I think that a lot of older people DO very much continue to keep up with all social and technological changes.

But the main point, that older generations are both socially and technologically conservative is not controversial.

I think that, despite many exceptions, this is a universal human truth.

[readymade]

Lets have a contest to see who is the oldest!!!!!

[MPSimmons]

Your parents spent their time learning technology.

The people in congress spent their time learning to be politicians. It wasn't until the last 15 years that you had to use a computer to do everything, so if you learned how to do what you do now more than 15 years ago, you didn't need a computer, so you probably don't know how they operate.

[dedward]

my folks, older than yours, also have their tech..... that doesnt mean they get how every detail works. there is no blanket statement here, but it is largely true that those who grew up with black and white tvs will not see things the same way. they may like the internet, but those of us a bit younger watched it hatch and explode globally. those even younger wont remember a tome without it and will have an even different perspective.

[rhizome]

Those elders who spent their time on ham radio and trains back in the B&W days acquired an inherent understanding of cellphones and the internet, respectively. :)

[jdietrich]

This isn't a generational thing, not in the least.

Not understanding the internet transcends all ages and social classes. It isn't a symptom of age, but of ignorance and incuriosity. The people we're talking about haven't even tried, they haven't bothered to look up "the internet" in an encyclopaedia, haven't bothered to ask a savvy intern to explain it to them. They're people who habitually hold strong opinions on things that they know less than nothing about - c.f. climate change.

[lelele]

> your time as a youth shapes you, forms your understanding of the world.

Only if you stop learning. And by learning i mean challenging your ways of thinking and acting (think about a computer geek learning salsa dancing), not learning something similar to things you already know (think about a computer geek learning yet another programming language).

> the majority of people (aka normal people) who where adults before 1985 do not "get" this new world the way you do.

Don't be a sheep. I mean, do not get along only with people in your age bracket. Keeping an open mind, socialize with younger people: they'll teach you things, if you let them.

Disclosure: 37 year old fart here.