Uma perspectiva diferente da tecnologia

«Technological progress - which served as a liberating purpose to Boomers, and a diversifying purpose to Gen Xers - is serving a new unifying purpose for today's teens. Ownership of tech tools and toys has become a badge of generational membership. While the percentage of kids with their own rooms keeps rising (76 percent in 1997), those rooms keep filling up with gadgets» (Howe, 2000: 272)

«Technology always means something new to each generation. The young Silent regarded computers as necessary adjuncts to American technocracy, with mainframes at the apex of vast institutional pyramids. Young Boomers shattered the telscreen and invented the new personal computer, which allowed each person to be his own creative island. GenX hackers and IPO dealmakers have taken this new high-tech individualism and exploited its bottom line. Now Millennial teens are using computers to do group projects and communicate among networks of friends. For this generation, computers are definitely fun - but not necessarily liberating. In software ads, adults are shown solo near the monitor, but the kids are shown in groups. As more of them spend a growing share of the day at on-line computers equipped with Instant Messaging and "buddy lists", Millennials can stay in almost uninterrupted contact with each other - at home, on vacation, wherever. On-line or off, Millennials usually maneuver in teams and under adult supervision, far beyond anything Boomers or Gen Xers ever encountered with the technologies of their own child or teen years.» (Howe, 2000: 275)