So with the caveat that I am only halfway through Mark Bauerline’s book The Dumbest Generation, I have some early impressions to throw out there. While I think there is some merit to this side of the debate (much like Keen’s Cult of the Amateur) what really bothers me about this book so far is, as the title suggests, this sense that our kids are at fault. Let me put it plainly: our kids are not “dumb” nor is this generation “dumb” simply because they spend a lot of time in front of television screens and computers or because they haven’t worked out for themselves how to get smarter using the Read/Write Web.
Kate Olson on 26 May 08That notion has helped to rekindle the browser wars and has resulted in the latest wave of innovation. Firefox 3.0, for example, runs more than twice as fast as the previous version while using less memory, Mozilla says. The browser is also smarter and maintains three months of a user's browsing history to try to predict what site he or she may want to visit. Typing the word "football" into the browser, for example, quickly generates a list of all the sites visited with "football" in the name or description. Firefox has named this new tool the "awesome bar" and says it could replace the need for people to maintain long and messy lists of bookmarks. It will also personalize the browser for an individual user. "Sitting at somebody else's computer and using their browser is going to become a very awkward experience," said Mitchell Baker, chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation.
