What is It?

The idea that “Net Geners” are inherently more skeptical is demonstrates a rather interesting and fundamental shift in the way society does and will approach information in the future. I noticed that there was a fair amount of skepticism about things online and amongst my friends, but I kind of assumed that this was always the case in the post-war era. I guess I’ve always taken the idea that people check things out and do some of their own vetting before believing them for granted.

I suppose since it (Internet, web, digital technology, 100+ channel cable, etc) has been an everyday part of life since my early years of school (maybe even before school), that I never really gave much thought to how people perceived the accuracy of information in previous generations. Of course, there are exceptions to this especially considering the ridiculous hoaxes and internet lore I hear from some friends, but that seems to be a rather small exception. Examples of this would be celebrity deaths and rumors of international happenings. Thinking about it now, if one was to look at most things they heard with disbelief and required verification before the proliferation of the web and other online resources, they’d never get anything done because they’d be making calls and reading endless reams of newspaper daily.

As Tapscott mentions, myself and most of my peers either look for news articles that support or refute the claim or check online hoax databases like Snopes.com. Not only does there seem to be an innate desire to get to the root of something, but the fact that I can check thing XYZ and know an answer within moments is very appealing. Knowing/learning about that one thing might not make me “smarter,” but it certainly makes me feel more clever and aware of what’s going on around me rather than having to rely on one distant authority to share an answer with me when it’s ready to do so. I suppose one might say that having access to that information gives individuals a sense of control or understanding over an increasingly chaotic world.

I can find multiple resource to pin down a more accurate answer on my own schedule. To go back to the title of this post “What is It?,” I kind of remember when the Segway scooter was nearing its launch, but it was only referred to as “It” or “Ginger” (I think). There was all this hype about how tech luminary X (it might have been Apple’s Steve Jobs) reportedly said that It was the greatest thing ever and would change the way cities are designed and it would change how people interact with each other, etc. At the time it seemed like all the tech blogs, news programs, magazines, etc, were ready to jump on this bandwagon and there was little to no skepticism about the whole thing, but my friends and I immediately started looking for alternative sources of information online, which included web forums, patent/trademark documents, etc., that gave some different opinions or information about what the device really was.

We didn’t believe the hype surrounding the device even though we never found any definitive information until after it launched, but we used this incredibly common tool (the web) to try to figure out what was what and sort fact from fiction without the involvement of traditional media.

On the other hand, there are times that I have found myself paradoxically relying on these same traditional sources to confirm or deny information found online. Although the web holds a ton of information that can be used to explore topics at leisure, there are still times when traditional news broadcasts or print media are used to supplement or affirm things found in cyberspace.

It is kind of interesting that although this is the "Net Generation," it feels very much like a hybrid information that relies on both spheres of information.