The survey compared technology and software usage among generations of working professionals, including Boomers (ages 44-60), Generation X (ages 29-43) and Generation Y (ages 28 and younger). The total sample size was 700 legal and white collar professionals with 250 coming from the legal profession.

According to the survey:

• Two-thirds of all Boomers agree that Personal Digital Assistants (like the Blackberry, for example) and mobile phones contribute to a decline in proper workplace etiquette, and believe the use of a laptop during in-person meetings is "distracting," less than half of Gen Y workers agree.
• Only 17% of Boomers believe using laptops or PDAs during in-person meetings is "efficient," while more than one third of Gen Y do.
• Only 28% percent of Boomers think blogging about work-related issues is acceptable, while forty percent of Gen Y workers do.

Yikes! Phones and PDAs are distracting and inefficient tools? Blogging is unacceptable? Who are these people? Unfortunately, they're the people who still have a lot of power when it comes to the decisions being made at the workplace. Baby boomers are the executives, the CEOs, the bosses, etc. while Gen Y is just now getting their foot in the door. But it's clear that these two generations strongly disagree on how technology is to be used.

More Findings

Another issue being faced is the blurring of boundaries between work and home. Gen Y workers generally don't see a problem accessing personal web sites from work - like Facebook and blogs. In fact, 62% of Gen Y professionals access a social network from work, but only 14% of Boomers do. That discrepancy could have something to do with the fact that Gen Y spends a lot more of their day online - they spend 10.6 hours per day accessing social networks, news sites, blogs, forums, and multimedia sharing sites versus only 5.6 hours reported by Boomers.

The study also found that Gen Y workers multi-task at higher levels, but it's here that the numbers get kind of confusing. According to the report, Gen Y workers spend an average of 22.9 hours per day using email, web browsers, IM, productivity applications while Boomers reported 10.3 hours with the same programs. But seriously, 22.9 hours? That begs the question: when does Gen Y eat or sleep? Who even stays up for 22.9 straight hours? The problem apparently comes from how the question was asked. Respondents were asked to report on how much time they spent on each of four types of applications in an average work day. The average time reported for "using" each application every day added up to a total of 15.9 hours, much longer than the standard 8-hour work day.

What this actually means is that workers are keeping many applications open at the same time and accessing them concurrently. (They're not staying up 20-some hours each day to work). However, we think that data could have been presented in a more straightforward manner. Still, the end result proves that Gen Y switches back and forth between applications far more than the Boomers do.

Wait, So Do Boomers Get Tech or Not?

The last time we wrote about Boomers' and their use of social media, we got a lot of heated responses in the comments about how "not all Boomers" are out-of-touch, so stop saying that! But actually, at the time, we weren't. We were instead sharing data from Forrester which stated that over 60% of Boomers were using socially created content. Yet that study seems to be a bit in conflict with this one. How can the hip-to-blogs (and videos, and podcasts, etc.) Baby Boomers of the Forrester study exist in the same world as those interviewed by LexisNexis? Which study is right? Or maybe, in a way, they both are. Maybe the stuffy old lawyers interviewed for this latest study don't care for blogs, but there are plenty of Boomers out there who do. We know from the comments of the last post that there are certainly plenty of Boomers who read this blog, at least. 

Image credit: Boomer: unclebumpy; Who's going to Hire a Gen Y? Anthony Weate

Half the students (32 of 64) skipped the class and listened to the podcast only. The other half attended in person, where they also received a printed handout. A week later, the students were tested on the material.

Podcast Listeners Did Better

The students who downloaded the podcast alone averaged a C (71 out of 100) but those who attended class averaged a D. And those who listened to the podcast and took notes did even better - their average was 77.

Before university classrooms empty out, it's important to note that this is only preliminary research. McKinney's study involved only a single lecture. Also, motivation may have come into play as well. Her experiment didn't count for class credit, so students were encouraged to participate with iTunes gift cards. The high scorer from each group was awarded a $15 gift certificate for use in the online store.

McKinney now plans to further study podcasts in the classroom over the course of an entire semester, instead of just one class. She wonders if students might find podcasts more useful early on in a class, when the material is still new. Still, McKinney is a big believer in the power of technology and its impact on education. "I do think it's a tool," she says. "I think that these kids are programmed differently than kids 20 years ago."

The first demonstration of the OpenKnowlege system is aimed to enhance the abilities of those seeking health-related information on the web. Instead of solely relying on a doctor to prescribe a course of treatment, people today tend to seek out medical information on their own using the web. Unfortunately, that data is often inaccurate and misleading. What OpenKnowledge intends to do is provide patients with structured information that has been checked for accuracy. To test this system, OpenKnowledge is working with Cancer Research UK on a project related to treatment methods.

2) Emergency Response

When there's an emergency situation, there is often a centralized point that disseminates critical information to people in need. But if that system itself breaks down, people are out of luck. OpenKnowledge aims to decentralize those systems so that a "backup" decentralized network of peers could be put into place. There, people could help each other out when the centralized system failed. This is currently being testing with emergency response authorities in Trentino, Italy.

3) Protemoics Research

Protemoics research (the study of the structure and function of proteins) can also benefit from the OpenKnowledge framework. In this area of science, many researchers worldwide rely on a small number of databases, creating a bottleneck of sorts which stresses the infrastructure of the databases themselves as well as those that maintain them. Researchers also find it hard to share data and results directly with other groups. In addition, the quality of the information in those databases is very mixed.

OpenKnowledge aims to solve all three problems by letting the researchers share data with each other directly, peer-to-peer style. This relieves the burden on the databases while the feedback will continually improve the quality of the data shared. This is currently being tested in an existing proteomics network in Spain called ProteoRed.

So...What Is It Exactly?

Understanding how a system like this works is difficult and the Open Knowledge web site doesn't make the process of comprehension any easier. Even despite the cute, Harry Potter-themed slideshow meant to describe the process, the actual details are hard to grasp. Obviously written by brainy researchers, they can't even call the slideshow a "slideshow," instead referring to it as a "simple pictorial introduction."

Still, if you can wade through the academic speech on the site, what you may find is a creative idea for sharing information. Basically, through open source downloadable code, OpenKnowledge sets up a peer-to-peer network where users can trade in information and data similar to how BitTorrent users trade mp3s and video files.

In the OpenKnowledge system, anyone can easily become a peer or even create their own peer by sharing existing code or writing their own. In order to become an OpenKnowledge user, you simply need to download the OpenKnowledge kernel from here together with some additional components that you might want to use. In addition to users, services, such as WSDL services, can also be made into peers on the OpenKnowledge network.

OpenKnowledge is more of a framework for decentralizing the systems on the web. It's not so much of a consumer-friendly web app than it is a model for information sharing that can help advance areas of science and research. You may not ever use OpenKnowledge yourself on your home computer, but your life may very well be impacted one day by the innovations it made possible.