If you are over 15yrs old, you are an immigrant in Cyberspace

I'm not pulling an Al Gore here, but compared to pretty much anyone I currently interface with, I was a substantive contributor to what we call teh Internetz today. I built the first privately held national backbone. I started the first low-cost ISP with the belief that until everyone was in Cyberspace the content would remain amateur. I have been inside the MAE's and Meet-mes from coast to coast, was at the first several NANOGs and ICANNs, registered domains for free, have met most of the historical gliteratti; my CTO in my first company put Harvard Law on the Internet in 1986 and created an account for the person who would write the RFC that made the Internet public. I read Neuromancer in the '80s and dreamed of what my daughter does every day today becoming a reality.

For all this and many more ROFLcons, I am just an immigrant. I will always be an immigrant. I was already an adult when I first visited Cyberspace. There is no way of turning that back. I will always speak with an accent. I can speak the language well. I paved the way for future generations. But I am an immigrant.

My daughter grew up in my lap as I typed email. She saw me turn to the web for answers, not World Book Encyclopedia. She has seen things we've done posted instantly online, not the next day in the paper.

What does this mean exactly? I don't know for sure. I will say that to stay on top going forward, it requires watching what those under 15 at least, and probably under 10 are trending toward. They will obviously trend toward what Disney (and others) offer them. (Prediction - they will not grow up as FB addicts, anymore than they are AOL addicts.)Regardless of where they go, they will do it in there own way, and when they can, they will create their own reality online, not what we provide them. Because they will know what they want, they will speak their own language, and they will have the skill to get it.

Do I miss the Old World? Not at all. I love being here, even as an immigrant.
Do I have any illusions over this being my World? No way. I've got my papers. I'm legal. But I'll always have an accent.