In 10 months, the generation of kids born after the invention of tabbed browsing will turn 20. This is a generation of children who never knew what it was like to have to open up a new browser window every time you wanted to navigate to another web page without closing your current window. Soon, many of them will enter the workforce, and some already have.
What conflicts will arise due to their failure to understand the untabbed ways of the baby boomers?
How can we prepare ourselves for their attitudes of entitlement?
What new products and services will we have to develop in order to satisfy a new generation of empowered consumers, who have only known tabbed browsing?
Will today’s aging companies, like Uber and Tesla, survive?
Huh? I’m pretty old, and I can’t really remember a time before tabbed browsers. I mean, I was on the internet very early. I’m sure I used them. But they left zero impression on me. I think you may be misunderstanding the significance of whatever divide you are imagining.
In contrast, i got all bent out of shape in the twenty questions game because some young whippersnapper described a thermometer as having a screen and using electricity, but not working batteries. While I own several electronic thermometers (one of them even has a screen and doesn’t use aaa cells) when you say “thermometer” I think of an analog device. And i still mostly use analog thermometers in and around the house. There’s an actual divide. But when your say “open a new web page in your browser” i probably just opened a new tab, not a whole new window.
I can remember people using different search engines. I had the head of group marketing come over all excited about this new search engine (northern lights IIRC) that I had to try. All of that was pre-google.
But, I also remember in the 90’s being asked for my thoughts on buying a domain name for the company I was working for. My response? “I don’t see any commercial applications of having two remote computers connected together.”
I remember when Google came out. It first, it had less indexed than some of the more established search engines. I used to use alta vista for anything obscure, and Google for things that were common, where useless links might clutter the searches.
20 years ago is probably around when i became an internet regular, when the ao started later that year. i don’t really remember not having tabbed browsing. not sure these people need an entire generation named for internet tabbed browsing.
oh, i guess i played around with the internet in the computer lab in college before that, but i didn’t use it much. i don’t think it was as powerful back then.
Before Google became ubiquitous,.my search engine of choice was Hotbot. It was basically a predecessor of google advanced search with lots of search options. I was way faster finding what I was looking for there than other contemporary search engines including google. It didn’t take long at all for Google to surpass them. I’d say it was under a year.
I think there’s other ignorance about the early and intermediate days of computing that will cause bigger issues than the tabbed browsing.
Like how some Y2K patches work.
There will be stuff that the youngsters don’t understand: like the origins of “c.c.” or “spreadsheet” or “shift” or why really old files only have 8 character names or references to cards. But their ignorance on a lot of that won’t cause problems.
