Big Changes Coming – Digital Natives: Kid’s graduating from high school this year (2008) were born in 1990!

Think about that for a minute.  By the time these kids were old enough to start learning about more than grabbing their toes the internet boom was beginning.  They were in 5th grade when the internet bubble BURST!  Long before that, their learning was not as much from Sesame street on TV but from child friendly (hopefully) internet sites.  By high school they had myspaces, in fact before most of us knew what a myspace was.  Socialization happened, in large degree, through a computer screen.  I heard the term “Digital Natives” today.  How much difference does that make in how a brain works or a person thinks?  One thing is sure, as kids grown up in this age become a big part of the workforce businesses that never needed much of a web presence will need interactive web sites in ways their 50+ year old owners will have a hard time imagining.

The owner of a manufacturing company that builds windows today is unlikely to see the power of a wiki built to share knowledge of the in’s and out’s of window technology.  But I’ll bet 5 years from now there will be some.  Will they be sponsored by the big residential builders (who will survive by the way) or will they spring up from somewhere else.  I don’t know but I will surmise that more and more unstructured sharing of information similar to Wikipedia, mypsace and facebook and youtube will transform business in ways we are likely to find hugely valuable and hugely scary at the same time.