A Generation Joneser speaks

I tried to post a comment to Michael Stephen's Tame The Web, specifically in response to a guest post on Generation Jones written by Michael Colford. After muttering under my breath, I finally realized I can simply post the comment to my own blog and pray for trackbacks. So here goes:

Add me to those unfamiliar with the GenJones term, but who will gladly adopt it henceforward. Apart from being a librarian (and isn't that why I'm reading this anyway?), I'm at the bottom -- or rather, early -- end of the Gen, at a whiskered 50. Older than my fellow commenters, I believe I feel that sense of tween-ness even more strongly.

Some of my peers have no interest, in fact an outright fear of the new technology: they feel positively threatened by it.

I am looked upon by the younger, connected-since-birth generation as something slightly extraordinary: pretty hip for an oldster, or at any rate getting cred for wading into 2.0 with only modest trepidation.

 And I'm at the tail end of the more established Boomer set, the ones who wear suits and run libraries, the ones who let the youngsters fiddle around with the technology. I suspect they think my interest in the profession's technological future is a career killer (and time waster). Or maybe it's that they anticipate being safely retired when the future finally comes to pass.

 But being the youngest family member to older, 'true' Boomers, this sense of being between generations has been with me since childhood: The Boomers had all the fun we missed out on, whereas we had to come of age in the unenlightened Seventies.

So wot the hey, wot the hey! Best we just soldier on. What is it we Gen Jonesers can add in this multigenerational muddle? The experience that says that play is good -- and learning better -- but not every toy makes a good tool.