Don't trust anyone over 40

Mark Bauerlein you've done it! I've been provoked.

Mr. Bauerlein, author of "The Dumbest Generation/Don't Trust Anyone Under 30" has it all wrong.

In response to his book, here are 8 reasons not to trust Bauerlein and his generation:

1. Every generation includes someone you can make fun of. Bauerlein calls out Jay's "jaywalkers" because he scared of all the 20-somethings wandering around with post-graduate degrees who are going to put him out of business.
2. Today's students have far more homework than your generation. I don't think you had three hours of homework a night as a second grader. If children today aren't reading, why is there a Harry Potter craze and a Twilight craze? Why are 20-somethings joining book clubs at an increasing rate? It's your generation that is illiterate... illiterate when it comes to finances, hence the personal finance crisis in our nation.
3. My dad can't spell. He's almost 60. (I'm not saying my dad is dumb, he's a very successful businessman and he got there without winning a spelling bee).
   
4. If you send me paragraphs over IM, yes I will make fun of you. There is a time and place for academic writing. Social media is not that place.
5. It's all about hand-eye-coordination. Thank you video games! Not everyone goes into professions where they sit at desks and write books. Interactive games exercise the mind.
6. The Internet provides us with more information than the traditional library. Because of this, we are expected to know more and I do believe going back to point #1 and the increased amount of HW, that our generation is learning more, especially about the mistakes of older generations.
7. Parents don't check bedrooms at night to see if their kids are off the computers because parents themselves are working 24-7 with their blackberry's. YOU are setting the example.
   
8. Your generation had more of an opportunity to get in trouble. You weren't trackable. Twitter, facebook, text messages, mobile phones... today we know where everyone is.
   

Did this provoke you at all? If so, share some other reasons why no generation can ever be classified as the dumbest.

Improving your ability... to feed us more personal information

I recently had a conversation with someone about the value of Facebook as a company. The website itself is probably worth very little, the value however, lies in the sheer billions of data people eagerly and freely supply about themselves and their friends each day through posts, photos, and profile updates. Given that this was on my mind, I was excited to read a blog post by Mark Zuckberg, founder of the popular social networking site titled "Improving your ability to share and connect."

"Sharing information..." is that just a fancy way of them saying, please supply us with even more personal data that we can one day sell? Before I even read the blog entry, I decided to do a search for the word "private." It came up once in the first paragraph.

It's amazing what Facebook did in terms of connecting people, allowing them to share things for free and interact with friends in this online space. Once the focus shifted to "news feeds," I got worried. Why do we care so much about what someone is doing every second of the day? Or care to share that information ourselves? I personally think posting sonograms is crossing the line...

I worry about privacy and the volumes of data under the control of Mark Zuckberg, yet, like all other facebook users, I freely post my photos and check update status at least 10 times a day and tell people what I'm up to.

Today, it's all about connectivity. I'm not sure I would be as close with all my friends that have moved away over the years if it weren't for social networking. It's making the world a lot smaller and Facebook is leading the way through the mapping of these connections.

Will this data dumping and over sharing on social networking sites become detrimental to our society?