I work for a company that does online promotions. That being said we are obviously online and moreover on computers all the time. Non-stop even, like many other cubicle dwellers. And friend, do you know what I just love? I love when someone at work that is 50 years old or older comes over to my cube to talk about something. We look to my computer for reference and this person says: "Oh, you know you can just roll the ball on the mouse and it will zoom faster."
Seems like a strange thing to love, but I I love this situation because what this person doesn't realize is that my generation has been surrounded by computers for so long that we are practically half computers ourselves. I was born in 1984: They gave us laptops in the womb. I learned how to use a qwerty keyboard before I drew my first breath. I copy and pasted my birth certificate into a word doc...just for a back up.
I think about this a lot. In the time that I was in elementary school- Kindergarten to 5th grade- the world totally changed because of computers. Early on in school teachers would ask the class, 'Who has access to a computer?' By the end of elementary school the thinking was more like 'If you don't have a computer, Find one.' The computer lab was like a teet from which to draw our electronic nutrients and we paid weekly visits.
The Oregon Trail taught us more about ourselves and about life than all of middle school combined. Dysentery? Floods? Oxen dying? Bad weather? Shooting animals? Drowning? Luckily it wasn't the Donner Party game...I don't think we were old enough for those kinds of decisions.
