Generation V Calls Out the Outlook-a-Saurus’s
Generation V Calls Out the Outlook-a-Saurus’s
November 21, 2007: Nothing seems to give analysts greater pleasure then attaching labels to things, and the latest upcoming generation has been slapped with a big V for Generation Virtual.
While the word ‘virtual’ is nothing new, it describes a host of different terms in the new age world we live in, one that is becoming increasingly simulated and accessed through computer terminals. One of the biggest forms of business communication in this era has been through email, whether it is with a desktop pc, a laptop, mobile phone or your blackberry, email is a big part of the business.
“We might think we are whatever is written on our business card, when in reality we’re email farmers who weed out and water our patch of email” said Jeffrey Mann, Research Vice President at Gartner.
Mann explains that the new wave of kids branching out of the school system have progressed beyond email and find it comical that businesses rely so heavily on it, inferring that business users have become Outlook-a-saurus’s and are in danger of becoming extinct.
“A kid sitting in a net cafe is actively using collaboration tools which are better, more sophisticated, faster and cheaper then the software your company has spent millions on” Mann said.
You would be forgiven for being slightly confused by the term Generation V, if we were going chronologically we would be up to Generation Z as the previous catch-phrases had been the baby-boomers, followed by Generation X and more recently Generation Y to describe what was considered to be the internet generation.
What Generation Are You?
- Baby Boomers: 1946 – 1964
- Generation X: 1964 – 1980
- Generation Y: Early 1980’s – Early 1990’s
- Generation V: Early 1990’s – Now
While the existing generations still hold centre court in the world of IT, particularly with the latest batch of young, fresh-faced billionaires coming out of Silicon Valley, the upcoming Gen V’ers could cause quite a stir in the business world, particularly with how deeply they have embraced technology.