Intergenerational Internet

If We Can't Forget We Can't Learn. If We Can't Learn We Can't Forget.

Another Monday, Another Naive Weekly - Curated stories on Technology and Internet Culture.

Copenhagen, 13/10/19

On Facebook my dad shared a link to a 20 question quiz. Usually I would not do anyone the favour of clicking on a Facebook link, but the topic intrigued me, so not only did I click on the link, I even took the test.

After providing my answers to the 20 multiple choice questions I got my test score: 12 correct answers. While not impressive, I found some comfort in the accompanying text saying that people my age had an average of 8 correct answers. With 12 correct answers I belonged to the age group of people above 60.

The test was about our knowledge of the Danish nature, covering plants, birds and related topics. Not many generations ago most of these questions would be common sense, but today the knowledge of our immediate nature is in sharp decline.

Growing up with the Internet I often had more knowledge about writing an email and was closer connected to the trends and collective knowledge of the "blogosphere” than my teachers. The Internet became a competitive advantage that grew with me from my studies into my worklife where I usually would end up in any meeting concerning anything digital.

It was my parents who introduced me to computers and the Internet, but it didn’t take long before I didn’t need their help using the mouse and keyboard. Browsing the Internet became second nature and the people I’d learn from were primarily peers in the same age group as myself.

The test about our knowledge of nature challenges the common belief that knowledge is linear progressing. While it is true that my great-grandmother couldn’t teach me anything about sending an email, she could surely teach me a thing or two about living more than 80 years on the Earth without leaving a negative carbon footprint.

I asked my dad for his score in the test. He was embarrassed of his 18 correct answers because my stepmom had managed to get 19 questions right. I think I still have a thing or two to learn from my parents, and possibly the Internet does too.

The Internet Black Hole

• Instagram is Removing the Following Tab
  On Twitter one of my favorite past-time activities to check the likes of other people. I often find that what the person like is more interesting than what the person is tweeting and it is a feature I’d love to build into a research tool if I had the skills. Therefore I’d be sad if Twitter was to follow Instagram that is about to remove the following tab.

• A Like Can’t Go Anywhere
  Frank Chimero wrote a wonderful short post about how product design influences the mood of a platform. Where you have to write a comment to leave a negative reply to an Instagram post or tweet, you can express appreciation by clicking like. The problem is that the like take less space than the negative comments — even when there are thousands of likes and only one negative comment. This leads Frank to conclude that many social networks have become places where we count good things, but experience bad things.

• Faux Headphone Air Piece
  In case you don’t want to spend $150 on a pair of wearable earphones with a battery life of one year and a dubious recycling plan, but still really want to look rich, then you should consider this great deal on ASOS.

• Phone in Dreams
  Just a quick show of hands, who has dreams containing phones?

• Books on Instagram
  I’d love to be hating on this project by the New York Public Library where they make classic novelles available in full-length as Instagram Stories. However, it is a pretty nice project that is also well executed from the illustrations to the font. Instead of hating I hope it’ll inspire more people to try to read a physical book, maybe even in a public library.

• Sillicon Valley Wants to Earn Money
  I wonder if it is in preparation for an upcoming recession that the Silicon Valley investors seem to re-value the aspect of building a company that involves making a profit. In any case it is a development I welcome. Let’s garden for Zebras and Snow leopards, not unicorns.

Naive Weekly

Hi, I’m Kristoffer and you have just read Naive Weekly - Curated stories on Technology and Internet Culture.

As always a big thanks to the ten Naive Friends who chip in every month or year to support me making time to write this newsletter: Nikolaj, Antal, Søren, Dries, Mikkel, Tina, Aydo, Lukas, Hans & Angela!

<3

Kristoffer