The Google Generation

In class we learned that we, our generation, is commonly known in the tech world as the “Google Generation”. I found this interesting as I had never heard this term before but as an avid “Googler” myself I absolutely believed the title. I did some research as to what the Google Generation actually is because identifying it from a subjective view is difficult. For as much of my life as I can remember Google has been such a prominent, staple of daily life, but I never thought of it as a way to label an entire generation.

A journalist named Nate Anderson had some particularly interesting things to say about our Google Generation and the attributes that are included in it. He interestingly noted, “It’s true that young people prefer interactive systems to passive ones and that they are generally competent with technology, but it’s not true that students today are “expert searchers.” In fact, the report calls this “a dangerous myth.” Knowing how to use Facebook doesn’t make one an Internet search god, and the report concludes that a literature review shows no movement (either good or bad) in young people’s information skills over the last several decades. Choosing good search terms is a special problem for younger users.” I agree entirely with this. When Pipo was teaching us ways to search on Google I felt a somewhat disgrace to my generation that I’d been searching incorrectly for all these years. I felt unworthy of being deemed a part of the Google Generation but knew my friends, too, definitely did not know how to search in such an efficient manner.

So what exactly is true about the Google generation?

The British Library had a few characteristics noted such as…

• They like to cut-and-paste. “There is a lot of anecdotal evidence and plagiarism is a serious issue.”
• They prefer visual information over text. “But text is still important… For library interfaces, there is evidence that multimedia can quickly lose its appeal, providing short-term novelty.”
• They multitask all the time. “It is likely that being exposed to online media early in life may help to develop good parallel processing skills.”

I, personally, believe all those to be true. Whether or not they are necessarily good or bad things I can’t really say. Being brought up in this internet age society has made me somewhat biased or unclear as to it’s positives and negatives because it is so inherent in our growing up.

Streetheart Amsterdam

This weekend, I had the pleasure of visiting Amsterdam. I found this beautiful city to be so unique and for a such a small city, it felt as if every inch was packed with different things to look at. Street art, I found, was not the most prevalent of things I saw.  With such a crowded city, buildings, shops, houses, canals, bridges, took up most of the space with few blank spaces from street artists aside from sporadic graffiti tags and a few stickers. But, luckily I’d done my research before visiting this wonderful place and was proved wrong in my assumed absence of street art. In fact, there is an entire museum devoted to it.

Street Art Museum Amsterdam was founded by Anna Stolyarova, originally from Ukraine and now lives in Amsterdam Nieuw-West. The museum that spans a couple miles, holds more than thirty murals for visitors to see. The murals are dispersed and hidden within the walls of Geuzenveld-Slotermeer, and were specifically commissioned for the area to “enhance the bond between the residents, art in public space and the neighborhood”, according to Stolyarova.

The museum focuses on the connection between the new production techniques of the contemporary art movement of graffiti/street-art to its more historic origins. Moreover, through the true stories of these murals, visitors get a picture of the local residents of Amsterdam as well as the history of the district, its ups and downs, and special characteristics.

One can visit all of the pieces within three hours for a very low price. The museum’s curators carefully select the artists and give them full freedom of artistic expression. The museum provides the artists with the residence opportunity in what is known as Nieuw-West. Today, Street Art Museum Amsterdam is a project run by the non-profit foundation Glamorous Outcasts and is one of the newer, most successful museums in all of Amsterdam.