A technology literate generation.

Blogging, a term you hear a lot these days... It's like a community in a lot of ways, one made up of hundreds of thousands of different people, with different interests, different points of view and different ways of expressing themselves. What an amazing concept it was to allow all the internet users around the world the opportunity to express themselves in this way. I mean we all know that the internet is the place to find out anything about anything, but the thing about Web 2.0 is it not only lets us do this, but it makes things like Myspace, Flickr, Wikispaces and of course Blogger possible. Now, with these tools, not only can we find out about whatever we may be interested in, but we can comment on it, discuss it, keep up to date with it through use of RSS and Atom Feeds and so much more. Most importantly we can express ourselves and our different points of view unlike any other way. No wonder so many people are becoming a part of this. The use of Blogging, and many more of the webs tools, allows anyone with internet access to say whatever they want to say, to a prospective audience of millions. And all this can be done at any time we want, with all the tools of the internet there to use at our own discretion.

The one problem with the way I'm looking at the whole web 2.0 thing is, I've never seen the internet any other way. It's something I'm so used to by now, I'm only 15, and by the time I got my own laptop all these tools were commonly used. Yet I still never used them for myself, maybe this is a fault of my generation. We are the generation that has never seen a world without computers, or the internet for that matter, and it seems that we take most of it for granted. Fine we can get our way around computers, and find whatever we want on the internet, most of the time with much greater ease than our parents, but most of the supposed technically literate generation are stuck in some form of vacuum. We can't see past sites like Bebo, Myspace or whatever other sites there are where we can view profiles of our friends, leave them comments and read their "blogs". I have no objections to these social networking sites, I use them, I really enjoy using them. The thing I can't quite grasp though is why most of the people my age can't see past them and see the wider potential of the internet. I look around Myspace and the blog feature often doesn't get used, even when it does it's being used as a place to put surveys and quizzes. I must admit, I was also blind to the internet's full potential as little as six months back, and I most likely still am blind to many of the ways in which the internet can be used creatively. Look at me now, this is only my first post on a proper Blogging site, I have had my Blogger account sitting around gathering dust for a while, and all because I didn't really know what to do with it. I think this is one of the main problems with other people my age, we know that all these tools exist and have a vague idea of what they do, or are used for, but we have never been taught how to use them.

Thankfully I have managed to break free from the vacuum, and have become a user of things like Wikispaces, Flickr... and as from now, I'm a Blogger, even something as simple as RSS is something many people my age do not have a clue about. I don't know about you, but I find this a real shame. Surely there is some way of teaching teenagers how to use all these magnificent tools that are easily accessed with a mouse, a keyboard and an internet connection. There is always the approach of teaching this in schools, but most teachers, parents and even some pupils will argue against this and say it is a waste of time, money and effort. In some ways they have a point. After all, we go to school to learn, and pass our exams, not to piss about on the internet. The thing is, it may not just be that people my age are stuck in a vacuum, it sometimes seems that people in general don't really know much about the whole web 2.0 idea and its features like blogging, and see it as more of a distraction than a tool for learning, creativity and communication. I can kind of understand it if I think of it that way, after all the internet is only about 24/25 years old (correct me if I'm wrong), so we can't expect everyone to know its full potential, especially when it is ever changing. Maybe this is the problem that needs to be dealt with. Rather than just teaching the technically literate generation more about the tool they all know and love, maybe we need to educate everyone on how useful web 2.0 can be... but again I ask, how can we do this?

I know that there are teenagers out there that have found out the benefits of web 2.0 like me and some of my mates have, but for some, their parents have brainwashed them into thinking that the internet is an bad place, filled with some sort of evil breed of cyber pixies or something of that ilk. I know that if you are reading this, you are most likely not one of the people who view the internet as a breeding ground for evil, and know that (for the most part) there is little wrong with web 2.0 and the internet, if you don't go looking for trouble that is. It's a major problem trying to convince people otherwise though, and that's one of the reasons more people my age don't get involved with stuff like blogging. I'm just glad that I have realised some of the really cool things web 2.0 has made available, and along with some of my mates I've taken the time to discover these amazing tools and use them in my own day to day life. Hopefully other teenagers out there will discover the real potential of web 2.0, or at least be able to identify what it is.


The Bass Player