I think this is a good example of how we create and buy into orthodoxies without ever really questioning them or, more importantly, revisiting them and seeing if they are still valid (assuming they were in the first place).
A few years ago in discussing font sizes, Jakob Nielsen noted that today’s young person is tomorrow’s older person and that not taking an older demographic into account and not being aware of how demographics change over time (because we age), is a dangerous stance.
The “conventional wisdom” that young people were necessary to technology may have been somewhat true but that “early adopter” demographic of the time this idea came about has since aged, becoming an older demographic. Teens now are a different group of teens. And an older demographic, while perhaps not dominated by early adopters, is not idle. They may come into the game late but they do eventually come in — if only because younger people join the ranks of older people. And late in the game is often when the game is most critical, where the most is on the line.
Also, when we speak in these general terms I think we tend to polarize: a young demographic means teens and an older demographic means retirees. We don’t really see the huge group between the extremes or how demographic groups overlap and blend.
We often get so caught up in predicting and projecting and imagining where things are going that we fail to see where they are and, relying on our various theories of how these things work, fail to see how they are actually evolving. Theories are nice, and sometimes on the money, but sometimes they deflect us from seeing things as they are or as they are becoming or as they may go. They can become shortcuts around actually thinking.
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