Thursday, January 28, 2010

House of M: De-Generation Grab

A lot of people love to read stories about say, a grandmother who tweets using a fax machine.

I laughed when my father was given a handphone, and carrying it in his UMNO bag, didn't know that it was his phone that was ringing.

Most young people see their elders as Luddites, some perhaps as relics of a bygone age.

The way flower children must have seen the baby boomers. Or something like that.

Technology used to be young people's last hiding place.

But I have seen a lot of worrying trends.

The forums and groups I go to online, used to have a rough mean age of say, 22. Now, they're 30, with more older people joining.

I played an online game, once, where my partners were no longer the high school or college kids, but car salesmen and nurses and whatever.

I see iPhones and Blackberrys in the deft and capable hands of people 20, 30 years my senior.

I see high end MacBooks as the new playthings of the older generation.

Younger kids must beg, borrow and steal for these items of some people's status symbols. Old people, just need to swipe a card or two.

I wrote last year, or two years ago, about how older people will inherit the Internet. The ageing Internet.

One of the reasons, is because generations of kids grow old. My generation grew up looking for porn on the Internet. Younger generations, they BUILT porn sites.

Now, those pioneers and pornsters and degenerates are all older.

Another factor, is the resilience and adaptive capabilities of old people.

One thing about old people - the got money, patience and experience. If they want to learn how to use a machine or an online service, they can do it. I mean, if they did not adapt, they would have been dead by now.

I have in the past snickered and hid a smirk at some old people grappling with technology they are not familar with. A couple of years later, they can show me a thing or two.

And so the meek and the old shall inherit the Internet. Young people are a transient bunch. For marketeers, if they want to build online brand loyalty, they need to attract the older crowd.

And old, does not mean olive drab fuddy-duddy square.

Old people like porn. Everybody likes porn. So I predict that the best sites in the world will host porn.

The End.