Feeling Old Yet?
Beloit College, Changing Times, Class of 2014, Modern Living
The New York Times reports that Beloit College felt a need to provide a cultural guide to equip faculty members to deal with first encounters with strange, new visitors from a different planet: the Class of 2014.
[H]ow is the class of 2014 different from previous classes? They’re more digital, of course.
First and foremost, few entering college this year have ever written in cursive. And this mobile phone generation has “never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.â€
They also rarely use e-mail. Why? Because it’s just too slow. And you can imagine how much they use snail mail: “rarely.â€
Another insight that shows how quickly things change is this one: The class of 2014 has “never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.†They don’t own watches and instead use their cellphones to tell the time.
The class also believes that there have always been “hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch†and that “Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.â€
Hat tip to Ben Slotznick.