Kids Leading Corporate View of Technology

If you are interested in the generation gap that technology often seems to cause between kids and parents and how corporations are watching where kids are using and pushing technology, take a look at Getting Ready for the Google Generation. It’s an opinion piece, but I think the author has struck a chord when he says that “iTunes, YouTube , MySpace , Facebook and Twitter have not only reshaped consumer behaviors and markets, but these on-demand services and social networks are also quickly redefining the technology industry as organizations of all sizes try to adopt new ways to engage customers, support employees and interact with partners.”

And where does the Google Generation part come in? The author sees Google taking a page out of Apple’s playbook and making the current generation loyal to it’s free applications for word processing and other everyday tasks rather than trying to take a giant like Microsoft on directly. It is a rather interesting end run approach.

Yet Another Digital Divide

Ok, here is yet another digital problem that needs solving. Several organizations are trying to scan the pages of every known book  - in or out of print – and store them for present and future use. But there seem to be two large problems with that. First, no universal format has been agreed upon for the books that are stored. Second, many important books and documents are being left behind: special edition books, religious books, historical documents, and books found in small local libraries or in private collections. Left undigitized, the information inside them will fade as the paper deteriorates and hence, yet another digital divide. You can read more about this problem as reported in The Digital Book Drive's Left-Behinds.