Thoughts about what is appropriate for a particular age permeate many facets of life, from the way we teach children in classrooms to the technologies we use. While the fashion industry understands this important concept, the IT industry is only now coming to grips with it.
Since hairless, bipedal apes first started measuring things, age -- the chronological measurement of how old we are -- has been the 'berbenchmark for mankind. Every year of our lives carries expectations regarding what we are supposed to accomplish, milestones we are expected to reach, information we are supposed to know and skills we ought to master.
Milestones have even been legislated, with lawmakers establishing a draft age (an age when it is appropriate to go to war), a voting age, a drinking age and a driving age. Insurers look at the driving records of those who have reached and surpassed the driving age and fix their rates accordingly, with the youngest drivers paying the largest premiums.
Also weighing in on what is age- appropriate, the American Academy of Pediatrics once told us that children under 2 should not watch TV at all and that older children should watch no more than two hours a day.
But who monitors society's expectations regarding technology ownership and use? A game of Chutes and Ladders might be labeled as appropriate for ages 4 to 7, but vendors don't do that for cell phones, instant messaging clients or search engines.
It stands to reason that in a world infused with ever more technology, our choices and our facility with technologies would begin to play a bigger role in defining age-appropriate behaviors.
Anthropologists have observed that the age at which parents give cell phones to their children illuminates interesting boundary and life-stage issues. One sociologist believes that for kids, receipt of a cell phone is "a matter of coming of age."
As interesting as all this might be, what practical applications does it carry? Here's an interesting exercise that the IT Leadership Academy has conducted with MBA students, social scientists, medical researchers and political scientists: Have your team choose ages of interest -- say, 5, 16, 21 and 40. Then ask them to write down the age-related expectations they havefor each, including their age- related technology expectations (tools, preferences and behaviors). You will be surprised at what you learn about attitudes toward age groups. And that's something that's important to know.
In the workplace, there is a widely held misconception that technology is a young person's game. We are told bypundits that digital natives -- thosewho grew up after computers, cell phones and the Internet had become widely available -- are destinedto be the new masters of the universe. But is this conventional wisdom the real truth of the matter? I don't think so.
In reality, we live in an age in which old forms and traditions are breaking down. Thanks to technology, old people don't act like old people anymore. Biases based on chronological age are disappearing.
Figuring out personal age-appropriate technology behavior is confusing today and will become more complicated in a future workplace that smashes together at least five distinct generations of employees -- from the Silent Generation, born in the Depression years before World War II, through the postwar baby boomers, their Generation X and millennial (or Generation Y) successors to Generation We, now mostly in elementary school.
One thing that's certain about this workplace of the near future: You will no longer be able to go by the general rule that the oldest guy in the joint is the person in charge -- or the least knowledgeable about technology.