The things he listed are very important to him BECAUSE he experienced them in that way. I'm 21, and I could concoct a similar argument based on geeky things I have experienced. Heck, I was basically growing up alongside the Internet. I was in high school during the explosion of social networking. I have watched things like podcasting and blogging get absolutely huge. Plus, I had Wikipedia at my fingertips for high school papers :) ! I got my first cell phone in high school, and my first 3g phone soon after. I can get online and talk on the home phone at the same time. It goes on and on.
As for movies, he may have me beat, but perhaps only because it takes time for films to become "geek classics." I will say that The Matrix blew my mind in middle school, I don't know how many times I watched that one.
So your generation grew up exploring Internet and social networking, and that's what you are excited about most. But I think you take devices you use as granted - computers, mobile phones. Our generation (I'm 1969) was exploring these devices themselves, how they work and how to make them work our way. We learned computer languages from listings in magazines and by trial and error. We thought AI is around the corner, we were sure computers can change our lives, but never foresaw Internet.
Edit: oh, and we thought digital electronics is an essential part of software engineering. So different now.
Well that's exactly it. Kids these days are adept at using the toys the grownups - us - built for them, but that's all they know. Ooh, another website, how exciting.
I think people tend to exhibit a bias toward their own childhood. What was technically different about new technology in the 70s versus such now? It's not like everything had already been invented/discovered in the 70s or 80s, and when I grew up in the 90s we were just "refining" or "recycling" ideas. And granted, much technology is more mainstream now, but I don't think actual geek culture has changed much. There's still a relatively small number of geeks that are (trying!) to keep up with the bleeding edge, just like there was in the 70s, or for that matter, presumably since the dawn of man. The base 2 number system was described over 2000 years ago, and algorithms over 1000. Schickard and Babbage designed mechanical computers 4 and 2 years ago, around the same time Leibniz and Boole were formalizing ideas of logic (all respectively). The transistor was invented in the 1920s, and by the 40s we had "modern" computers. People like Godel, Church, Turing, Shannon, and Hartley laid the groundwork for formal computer science and information theory in the 30s. Presumably the number of geeks that took interest in these developments HAS increased over time, now even to the point of being mainstream (or at least "cool"). No less, at any point in the timeline geeks could be tempted to think that theirs was the generation of true exploration and innovation, while later ones take earlier work for granted. They'd be partly right: we always take prior discovery for granted, in fact, that's why technology advances, for the good of us all. But be careful lest you think your own reference point a foundation-less foundation for all subsequent innovation. I definitely wish I shared some of the experiences of earlier geekdom, like hacking around with DOS to fit a certain app in memory, learning to program from magazines, etc., yet me and my mind thrive in the current Information Age. We children of the 90s get bad rap for being lazy, which certainly is true, but there are still those of us who are and will be fixing, studying, discovering, hacking, and inventing with all the curiosity and fervor of our technological forefathers.
That was really interesting to read and I think I agree but I'd like to offer one criticism, it was really hard on the eyes with the lack of paragraphs.
We have the luxury/advantage of knowing how things work from bottom up, starting from semiconductor physics and logic gates to web server and browser architecture, but an important thing for us, grownups, is to never stop getting excited with new stuff.
Well, true, but there's no technical reason that all this Web 2.0 social networking stuff couldn't have existed in 1997. Endless variations on the theme of "generate some HTML from a database" are just not significant in the wider sense.
There's no technical reason that printing couldn't have existed 2000 years ago. (Ok, it did exist in China but not in Europe anyway.) Apart from technologies there's also social demand and historical necessity. I don't think Flickr and YouTube would've been appreciated and would've challanged traditional media in 1997.
As for movies, he may have me beat, but perhaps only because it takes time for films to become "geek classics." I will say that The Matrix blew my mind in middle school, I don't know how many times I watched that one.