I don't know if I could dissagree more with those opinions, maybe the uses of such things will change, and already have started to, but go away? I think not.
Email, not gonna leave any time soon, this technology though limited in scope, is the new backbone of the inter-office memo.
Websites, I shouldn't need to say anything since this is on one.
Datacenters, where will the cloud be without them?
Fixed Phone lines, though this is the one I really would like to see gone, I doubt it will happen in this generation, where I live cellular phones have no signal, and no carrier has any plans to build a tower, ever, I live in a low population area, and the big boys don't want the little bit of business we would give them, so the landline is our lifelink
PCs? that statement is rediculous. What the heck would I be using to read this without one? What would the ******** gamers use? Why would I get rid of the one place, thats 100% private, in my home, to store all my data?
And lastly, traditional data-processing, well I really don't have anything to say about this because the statement "traditional data processing" in itself means it is outdated, new technologies will always replace old ones, newer, better, faster, more accountable methods are being developed every day, and have been since the beginning of computing, so this one is a duh statement in my mind
Tech that Gen Y will sweep away
Summary
There's a new generation of people, raised in the Internet era, who don't see the need for many of the technology tools that once seemed irreplaceable.
Topics
Web 2.0 evangelist Don Tapscott - author of tech titles including Wikinomics and The Digital Economy - is forecasting a "big conflict" in the office, sparked by the generation of 11- to 30-year-olds who are determined to reshape the workplace in their own image.
Talking to silicon.com about his latest book Grown Up Digital, Tapscott laid out five "generational firewalls" that bosses need to tear down if they want to attract the brightest and best of Generation Y.
Here are technologies that are going to soon become obsolete if Generation Y has its way.
Email
"Young people see email as good for sending a thank you letter to an aunt but not much else."
Websites
"The internet is increasingly about building community, not providing content - it offers a way for people to self-organise to create communities. That is why Facebook beat Match.com, why bloggers are beating CNN.com and why Wikipedia is beating Encyclopaedia Britannica."
Datacenters
"They are going to move into the cloud, in much the same way that electricity companies moved away from the practice of having their own power plants onsite during the early days of electricity."
Fixed line phones
"They will be replaced by mobile devices."
The personal computer
"They will be replaced by small always-connected devices with a high degree of mobility. The personal computer was always an oxymoron for me, it's like the idea of personal sex. The purpose of computing is to communicate."
Traditional data processing
"This is headed for the ashcan of history. Everything in a report will have an XML tag called eXtensible Business Reporting Language." [This provides an identifying tag for each piece of information which is computer readable so the machine can understand what data it is handling].
This article was originally posted on silicon.com.
Talkback Most Recent of 22 Talkback(s)
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aopiehl27th Mar 2009 -
Mobile phones in low population areas.
In 1935, the US passed the Rural Electrification Act to provide electrical power to places where it was uneconomical to do it commercially. I'd be very surprised if this didn't happen for mobile communications, probably within the next few years.
A lot of so-called "Third World" countries skipped right by the era of universal land-lines and are going straight to universal mobile. It's fairly cheap.
Henrik Moller27th Mar 2009 -
Voice Quality
I just hope that this so called GEN Y 1.0 will improve the voice qaulity of the "smart a&& iphone /mobile device. Can't hear the bloody thing ring; can't understand the person on the other end and they can't understand you; can't read the text or comprehend the pics your looking. Oh yeah all hail(hell) the new tech crap point o!
El Condor29th Mar 2009 -
Who cares about Gen Y?
Tell them to get a job and stop loafing around the coffee shops acting so self-important. Why would a corporation want to hire a Gen Y'er? The boss would have to deal with the Gen Y'ers annoying helicopter parents who would complain that their precious darlings are not the CEO of the corporation after 2 weeks.
1) Email - too many corporations and government entities use email for these slackers to cause the end of email.
2) The day Facebook figures out how to make money, then maybe. It is not about web hits, it is about the bottom line. Acting hip and cool is not going to pay the server maintenance and Internet connectivity fees.
3) Where do you think this "cloud" exists? In a data center.
4) Fixed land lines are going no where. They will either fight back with competitive pricing or they will morph into high speed data lines. Maybe when the last Baby Boomer dies, then land lines might bite the dust.
5) A stupid portable phone PDA-like device replacing a PC? Dude if you believe that, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. BTW, what do you think people use do develop the software for your pocket gadgets? A PC.
6) Sure XML will solve all problems, cure cancer, end poverty and hunger, figure out how to travel faster than the speed of light, etc. XML is just another tool of "traditional data processing".
If this is the best of Gen Y, then the Baby Boomers and Gen X have nothing to fear, except when they get too old to work and have to rely on Gen Y to fund Social Security and Medicare.
Unix Pimp27th Mar 2009 -
You are half right
I'm Gen Y, and I agree. Most of us are lazy and think we know a LOT more than we really do. But it's because we were corrupted by the baby boomers into a huge sense of entitlement - the same entitlement many of them have.
Don't separate the roots from the branches.
Comnenus27th Mar 2009 -
Really?
"But it's because we were corrupted by the baby boomers into a huge sense of entitlement -the same entitlement many of them have."
Well child...I'm a baby boomer who has WORKED his a$$ off to get where I am today in the IT field. NOBODY has handed me anything.
My parents were divorced when I was 4, and my mother raised 3 children on her own, as a working mother. I got my first job at age 9...a paper route...something your generation has no clue about?and saved my money to buy the things my mother was unable to provide.
I have had the ?pleasure? of working with many of your generation?and believe me?you children wouldn?t know what hard work was, even if it bit you in the backside.
IT_Guy_z27th Mar 2009 -
work ethic
I don't think it's fair to generalize an entire generation as having such a bad work ethic. Most people's work ethic comes from their parents' ethic, IE your mom's.
I've been working since I was 9 (I'm 27) including a paper route, mowing lawns, cashering, moving furniture, and so on. So here's one Y that knows hard work better than most. And ya know what..I'm not even that upset at having put all those extra thousands of dollars in social security that I'll most likely never see a dime of when I'm in my 60s cause the Boomers will suck it dry.
odcchaz27th Mar 2009 -
RE: Tech that Gen Y will sweep away
Email? - Here to stay and more useful to business than to my Aunt Millie.
Websites? - Information is good and necessary. Networking sites have limited applicability - they are not the answer to all information=sharing needs.
Datacenters? - Cloud processing is not the answer to all computing requirements. There are and will always be issue of security and availability. If my business survival depends on my IT, I want that IT under my control - not some company which could be bought out, merged or bankrupt.
Land Lines? - Cellphone coverage is not universal and may never be.
PC? - There is a growing shift to thin clients, but this seems to run is cycles - we've been thru this before.
Traditional Data Processing? -
"Much of the [IT] history of the last 20 years has involved replacing what workd with what sounded good."
Of the proportion of BUSINESS data that is digitized, the overwhelming majority still sits on mainframes. That is not going away anytime soon - and IBM & the business world just woke up to that fact and are making a big push to get mainframe training back into the educational process as it used to be.
IBM mainframes morph thru succeeding generations, but I expect to see them around 30 years from now (assuming I's still around then).
steeleweed@...27th Mar 2009 -
I believe in the same
I think you're right in your statements.
Wherever the future might lead us, that
concepts have been established, and even though
others may come and go, these ones will still
remain for quite some years.
What we will of course see is that Gen Y will
evolve them, specially by mashing-up or
cramming these technologies with others or in a
different way.
I also hope to be here by that time...
Cheers.
bmateus@...27th Mar 2009 -
Mr Tapscott is, what? 16 years old?
His observations sound like they could have come from my kids and reflect a fairly profound ignorance. About the only thing he may right about is that mobile devices will replace land-lines. People like mobility and copper is expensive to buy and expensive to install.Henrik Moller27th Mar 2009 -
RE: Tech that Gen Y will sweep away
I think this article should be about how the Boomers are slowing down progress by trying to save the technology they developed from extinction. We've got 60 year old CIOs with EE degrees from before the personal computer was even mass produced. The simple facts are that computer technology and computing methods are developing faster than the Boomers can learn it and apply it to their business models. Or they're afraid of it.
The Gen Y's are working jobs and can't understand why they have to do everything "the slow way." They can rattle off multiple ways to improove thier jobs, but are discouraged then those ideas fall on deaf, ignorant, and beaurocratic ears.odcchaz27th Mar 2009 -
This is amusing
Yes, the stuffy old curmudgeons have screwed up the world and have used thier stodgy fat cat good ole boy network to keep the unappreciated youth under a glass ceiling.
Of course that youth is really just a lazy unappreciative mob with a sense of entitlement who wouldn't recognize a hard day's work if they stepped in a steaming pie of it.
This kind of ageist posturing has been going on since homonids learned to reproduce.
The only certainty is that today's paradigm is tomorrow's obsolesence ... and predicting what will become tomorrow's standard is as reliable as forecasting the DOW.
Lunatic5929th Mar 2009 -
The future of the past is now and we are not up there yet
While your post provides a good commentary I think it is not based on reality.
Your post assumes that we've moved from green screens to windowed interfaces to web interfaces to WEB 2.0 etc...
Well, let me tell you that green screens are alive and well as interfaces for core business applications that were written 30 or 40 years ago.
Of course the conflict the title alludes will be there. I have that conflict with green screens and fixed sized fields, that doesn't mean that they are going away anytime soon.
rarsa27th Mar 2009 -
Gen Y, imbrace Big Brother!
But they don't even know what it is
LittleGuy27th Mar 2009 -
RE: Tech that Gen Y will sweep away
...reminds me of the prediction of the "paperless office" circa 1980 that would "definitely take place" before the turn of the [20th] century...nice ambition, still waiting. Better yet, where are the flying cars that everyone was supposed to be driving by Y2K as predicted by Popular Mechanics in the mid 70's? So far, nobody has been very successful in predicting the future--let alone nailing a timetable.
Good luck--I'm not quitting email yet.
Jack51627th Mar 2009
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