Radio Sweethearts

Before the hard-hitting story about how Japan is crazy for their cellphones, and after the stories about the New York Times’ financial woes and Rush Limbaugh’s push to be the face of the Republican Party, this week’s OTM features an investigation into “digital natives,” easily the least offensive name for a generation I’m supposed to be part of.

The cutoff, they’re saying, is 1980. Kids born after that, the argument goes, have spent their whole lives online.

I don’t believe that that’s true for myself or Kerry.

 

While it’s true that I’m older than the Macintosh and Kerry isn’t, by a matter of months, those computers weren’t originally to be taken online. Hell, until a couple years after either of us were born, most computers didn’t even have built-in hard drives. My family’s first computer (an old Mac Performa, which we bought in around 1994) only had 30 MB of hard drive space.

More to the point: I remember arguing with my dad about how we really needed a 5600 baud modem instead of a 2800 baud, because – and I quote my 10-year old self – the internet is only going to get faster.

The child on the story’s page has a baby picture taken in front of a laptop. It’s cute, and I have a corrolary baby picture. In front of a manual typewriter.

 

I don’t disagree that my younger siblings see the world differently for having had computers their whole lives, but I can understand the way both that generation and previous generations see the world.

Kerry and I are not digital natives. We are the children who learned to speak in the Old Country, and who were brought here as children. Though we learned quickly the new language and the new customs, we are still adept at code-switching, at stepping back and forth between generations.

What I am arguing for here is a more gentle fade between generations. I am arguing for some understanding on the part of media pundits that I have always been between generations. I was born in 1982. I’ve been classified as digitial native, as digitial immigrant; I’ve been classified as Generation X, as Generation Y.

I tend to identify more strongly with the older generation. My tastes and my experiences are more in line with those who came before than with those who came after. But the fact of the matter is, I speak the language of those who came after.

Like Richard Hell (who wanted to be a hippie, but ended up a punk because he came too late), I belong to the _____ Generation. Except that I’m too young for that as well.

This week’s recap was written by Matthew, and edited by Kerry, who, no matter what she tells you, could not have possibly seen the Macintosh 1984 Super Bowl commercial.