To me this statistic is really about the poor job the high technology industry has done in creating products that not only can be used for daily tasks, but also encourage deeper exploration and power use. I’m taking law school classes with recent college grads, and I’m continuously amazed at how little most of them know about computers. They simply haven’t been given any meaninful instruction about the basics of computers or the Internet, and to learn more requires a big investment in time.

Back to the 12 year olds. Jakob Nielsen’s latest book on web usability (“Prioritizing Web Usability”) mentions that in user tests he has found that children and teenagers are less adept than most people realize. “Teens are much more apprehensive about technology than it might seem,” he notes in a brief section called, “Teenagers: Masters of Technology?”

As for members of Congress, I know it’s fashionable to assume that Congresscritters are morons, but crafting intelligent technology policy is a radically different task than watching skate videos on YouTube. I like to hope that for every Ted Stevens there’s a Zoe Lofgren.

To me this statistic is really about the poor job the high technology industry has done in creating products that not only can be used for daily tasks, but also encourage deeper exploration and power use. I’m taking law school classes with recent college grads, and I’m continuously amazed at how little most of them know about computers. They simply haven’t been given any meaninful instruction about the basics of computers or the Internet, and to learn more requires a big investment in time.

Back to the 12 year olds. Jakob Nielsen’s latest book on web usability (“Prioritizing Web Usability”) mentions that in user tests he has found that children and teenagers are less adept than most people realize. “Teens are much more apprehensive about technology than it might seem,” he notes in a brief section called, “Teenagers: Masters of Technology?”

As for members of Congress, I know it’s fashionable to assume that Congresscritters are morons, but crafting intelligent technology policy is a radically different task than watching skate videos on YouTube. I like to hope that for every Ted Stevens there’s a Zoe Lofgren.

The IT world is far more complicated than the aforementioned industries, so we can let them slide a little on that. However, there comes a point where people need to just get over their own pride and realize that people with business and law educations are probably not going to formulate good policy on complicated IT and hard science issues.

The IT world is far more complicated than the aforementioned industries, so we can let them slide a little on that. However, there comes a point where people need to just get over their own pride and realize that people with business and law educations are probably not going to formulate good policy on complicated IT and hard science issues.

It raises some various serious issues when children know more than adults (and their parents) about the dominant technologies of their time, especially when the elders are elected officials trying to make public policy decisions about the future of the technologies in question.