Thanksgiving Reading: “Ouliers” and “Grown Up Digital”

I’m on a layover in Las Vegas as I travel home from my Thanksgiving Day festivities, and I’ve just polished off Malcolm Gladwell’s latest release, Outliers. It’s an interesting read, and much like his previous books The Tipping Point and Blink, Gladwell seeks to make deductions about how and why people do things.

Outliers is specifically about what makes successful people successful – beyond the obvious traits of aptitude and hard work. He argues that without particular opportunity and cultural influences, people like Bill Gates wouldn’t be who they are today, and Asians wouldn’t be so darn good at math. He even explains how the smartest man in the world never amounted to much because he wasn’t raised in a culture that supported his successes. Gladwell also argues why lower socio-economic children achieve less on standardized tests, and he convincingly says that when you’re born has as much to do as where you were born.

From Gladwell’s book, I moved on to my next bit of reading pleasure called Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott. (Not surprisingly San Jose airport has a disproportionate amount of books about technology than any other airport I’ve ever been to.) This, Tapscott’s most recent release, describes the relationship that the Internet Generation (Net Gen) has with technology, and how today’s youth (between the ages of 11 and 32) are developing unique social and cultural norms that the Gen Xers (between 32 to the baby boomers) may struggle to relate to. Further, he claims that a Net Genner’s brain is actually developing differently than those before us – for example that the Net Gen person processes images and sound more quickly.

So far, I’d say this is a must-read for anybody who is implementing online marketing/social media marketing in today’s marketplace. There’s so much in the book about how the Net Gen utilizes all forms of media as second-nature in their lives, and it really is crucial to understanding the demographic if they’re your target market (ahem, WPS here we come!).

So I’m about to page 150 as I’m writing this post. But I wanted to share a quote that gave me a giggle on the airplane:

[begin quote]

Today, most of us oldsters have a pretty good facility with technology, but you may not remember what the initial adjustment was like. When PCs first arrived, the stories about our difficulties using them proliferated; there were so many bizarre narratives, in fact, that some may have been hoaxes. One help desk reported that someone thought the mouse was a foot pedal and couldn’t get it to work. Somewhere else a secretary was asked to copy a disk and came back with a photocopy. Another person “hit” the keyboard so hard, he broke it. When asked by a support line if she had Windows, one woman apparently replied, “No, we have air conditioning.” One person was said to be found trying to delete files on a disk using Wite-Out. There were hundreds of such stories. A friend of mine tried using a mouse to point at the computer screed as if it was a TV remote. What can we learn from this? Are adults just stupid?

While laughable, the actions of these adults made sense. Boomers were familiar with TC remotes, foot pedals, photocopiers, windows, Wite-Out, and doors. Each of these artifacts had decades of meaning and behaviors associated with it. Net Geners had a cleaner slate. Absorbing the digital media was easy.

[...] Net Gen kids growing up looked at computers in the same way boomers look at TV. Boomers don’t marvel at the technology or wonder how television transfers video and audio through thin air, we simply watch the screen. TV is a fact of life. So it has been with Net Gen and computers. And as technology relentlessly advances each month, young people just breathe it in, like improvements in the atmosphere.

Some personal experiences with my own children made this clear to me. In early 1997, I spent an hour as a guest on a Canadian television program called Pamela Wallin Live, helping to demonstrate how to surf the Web. The point of the show was to illustrate to the viewers the wealth of material available on the Net. When I returned home, my wife Ana, my most trusted critic, told me she thought the show was good, but that our son Alex, who was 12 at the time, thought the while idea of the program was dumb.

Ana said to him: “Hey Alex, Dad’s going to be on TV live for an hour. Let’s go watch.”

“Cool, what’s the show about?” Alex replied.

“Dad’s going to use the Internet on TV – surf the Web,” Ana said.

“That’s the dumbest TV show I’ve ever heard of. Why would anyone want to watch Dad use the Internet?” Alex asked.

“Everyone is interested in this new technology, how to use it, and how it works. it’s a technology revolution,” said Ana.

“Mom, this is so embarrassing. All my friends are going to see this. You don’t need to show people how to use the Internet,” said Alex.

The next day over breakfast, to hear it for myself, I asked him why he didn’t want to watch the show.

“Dad, no offense, but I think you adults are obsessed with technology. You call this a technology revolution and you are so fascinated by how the technology works. Imagine some other technology, Dad.” At this point I sensed he was going to use an analogy, and sure enough he pointed to the television. “The television – is that technology to you, Dad? Imagine a TV show where people watch you surf television! Wow! Let’s see if my dad can find a football game on television! Now my dad is going to find a sitcom!”

At this point his 13-year-old sister Niki came to his support ( a rare thing), embellishing a point from a previous conversation.

“Yeah Dad, how about the refrigerator. Remember, it’s technology too. Why don’t we have a TV show where we can all watch you surf the fridge?” To rub it in, she said, “Check this out, my dad has found some meatloaf. This is just fascinating television!”

In another incident, Alex, then about 14, asked me to come to his room to see what he’d found. On the screen, he had a beautiful, high-resolution, full-screen color photo of Mars. It was beautiful. i told him it was spectacular and asked where he got it. “Dad, I’m looking through this thing called the Hubble Telescope.” At this point I’m thinking how incredible that my son from his bedroom is accessing one of the most sophosticated pieces of technology ever invented by humankind.

But he’s thinking something different: “Isn’t Mars amazing?”

To them, technology is like the air.

[end quote]

Tagged as: don tapscott, malcolm gladwell, marketing, online marketing, Social Media