Dave Snowden complains rightly about the oversimplification of differences between generations, in particular, the fuss being made over so-called digital natives:

We now have this rather silly idea that the next generation will be digital natives, comfortable with technology in a way that their parents were not. We also have the idea that this is necessarily a good thing. There are several reasons to challenge this but there are two main themes to the arguments. Firstly its simply not true that you can classify a whole generation and secondly the assumption that the new skills can displace older capabilities without loss.

Snowden goes into more detail with some telling examples. In particular, I liked his comment, "Professions have more in common across the generations that the generations do across professions."

Related posts:

The Myths of the Digital Generation
Myths of the Digital Generation, Part II
Myths of the Digital Generation Cont'd
Hype from the Media and Web 2.0 Evangelists