Our youngest son and daughter arrived Sunday along with two of our 9 grandchildren (soon to be 10.) Lucy is 25, Joe is 16, Alisha is 11 and Sharmila is 8. That seems a decent age spread against which to test attitudes towards the online world. Joe brought his IBM R31 (no way are they getting their paws on my Powerbook!) and I hooked his machine to DSL. Comments so far:
Sharmilla: I really like Hannah Montana (Disney Channel) because I’m a huge fun of her music and TV shows and everything about her
Alisha: MyScene lets me dress people up and play games. PollyPocket is pretty cool too. Lots to do. I found PollyPocket from MyScene and my pencil case has Bratz on it so I go there too.
Joe: MySpace beats the crap out of MSN Live which is a dog ever since it went to the Live thing. I like you can find music you never knew about. My Nano’s filled with that sort of stuff.
Lucy: If it keeps them happy and amused while I’m trying to do other stuff then great but I don’t want them to be in the online world all day and night.
No-one mentioned advertising. All of them use Google. So I asked Joe about ads on MySpace: “Doesn’t interest me so I don’t bother looking.” But here’s the thing. Each of the children wants to be entertained and interact. What does that say for the future of business computing? Will Generation M expect YouTube style clips for training? What do their choices say about how software is designed for users?
As an aside, Joe’s about to start A-level studies. His choices: psychology, media studies, product design and ICT – interesting choices. He reckons media studies and IT are pretty popular. Which would seem to play directly to Tom Foremski’s thoughts about technology as media.
UPDATE: Joe says he has about 800 friends on MySpace and reckons he’ll carry a number of these through to his next educational establishment. Hmmm…networking for life?
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