Digital generation gap

Well, it had to happen one day. There sure was going to be one day when there would be a cool new thing on the web and I was going to be too old-fashioned to pick it up. After all, how many new tricks can an old dog learn? What surprised me was that it happened so soon in my life. I am talking about the digital generation gap. The eerie feeling that creeps up your mind that you have started belonging to the previous generation and the next gen is ready to run you over.

I started using the Internet while the so called dot-com bubble was building up - mid to late nineties. So I was among the early users of many things on the Internet we take for granted now - web-based e-mail, web-based storage space, e-shopping, online chat, egroups (this was before Yahoo bought e-groups and named it Yahoo groups), etc. In the recent years I had transitioned well into a blogger's world, so I had blindly assumed that I had kept pace with the speed of the digital revolution (what exactly is that?)

I had heard about Orkut once in a while, mostly from people who are fresh out of college or who did so a couple of years back. I had conveniently assumed that it was one of the 'fringe' apps on the net I won't have to bother about. But eventually when I got an invite to join Orkut from Manju, it was time to really explore what it was all about. And what did I see? Everyone, their grandmoms and their dogs already seemed to be members of this online community! Many of my classmates from SJCE, many of my old friends living all around the globe were already on-board! There were communities that I really cared about and readily wanted to be a part of. It was as if I wokeup one morning and found that it had _snowed_ extensively in Bangalore and I did not even know about it. I was left wondering "Hey, how did I miss the bus?"

Now that I have caught up with it, I feel much better. However, I know that similar things are just waiting to happen again and one ofthese days I won't keep pace. So even though an actual human generation is around 25-30 years, a generation in the digital world will be much shorter. My guess is that people who are 10-15 years younger to us will belong to an entirely different generation altogether on the Internet. That is not a pleasant feeling, you know!