What is the first thing you do when you wake up? Stretch a little, drink a glass of water? Rub your eyes and will your body into leaving the warmth of the bed?
That used to be me, a year ago. I'd lie curled under my Jaipuri quilt, gazing out the window -- sunlight streaming through the oak leaves, the sound of finches going about their daily business.
Now, things are different.
My head propped against two pillows, still not quite awake, I reach for my laptop, slowly open my eyes and am welcomed by thousands of updates from bloggers, friends and journalists around the world. While I wade through the tweets, plurks, tumblelogs, Flickrs, Jaiku activity streams, Facebook updates and Plaxo Pulse, I'm also e-mailing colleagues and speeding through RSS feeds in my customized Google Reader. I've just spent the first 20 minutes of my morning scrambling through the noise of Web 2.0. Thanks to my iPhone, I can now carry the "noise" with me. As I scan through another 1,553 unread news items, I give my pearly whites a quick check and then, just before stepping into the shower, I dock the iPhone, turn up the volume and listen to the Environment Report Podcast from NPR.
Downstairs, while relishing a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats, I go through my personal e-mails, prepare a grocery list, text message "wake up" to my husband (who's on a business trip) and check on the volatile stock market all on my phone, a.k.a. lifestyle management tool.
My Bluetooth device in place, I step out to catch the shuttle that will ferry me over to the light rail station a mile away. (Mobile GoogleMaps tells me that it would cost $1.75 to take public transit vs. $4.19 to drive.) During the 40-minute commute, I can access my social networking updates through FriendFeed, read news items and share the ones I like with friends, Twitter about the accident on North First and Gish, and review a PowerPoint presentation for a 10 am meeting.
For those of you who like to get newspaper ink on your hands or hear the rattle of pages as you flip through a magazine, I might sound like a cyborg. But to the students on our campus, the "millennials," I'm just another 30-year-old Generation X-er trying really hard to catch up with them.
At heart, I'm more of a floppy-disk person than a thumb-drive person. I bought my first cell phone seven years ago. Before then, I got along just fine using pay phones, writing letters (yes, handwritten letters on paper), and meeting people face-to-face. Although my husband calls me an "early adopter," I had to make a conscious effort to seek out and experiment with new technology. The transition didn't come naturally to me. That isn't the case for younger, "digital natives." For them, technology is all-pervasive, hardly worth a second thought.
"Since birth, they have been surrounded by blinking, beeping, shining gadgets that stimulate them," says Andrew Wood, communication studies professor. "This is a generation that does not see a meaningful distinction between the device and their skin and bones."
"I got my first cell phone when I was 15 and felt it was a necessity. Everyone around me had one," e-mailed Amber Hedges, 20, a radio-TV-film major. "It wasn't the same as having the cool new shoes or trendy bag; it was an essential tool to survive in high school. My mother did not feel the same connection to her cell phone -- for her, it was fun new technology but not key to connecting with others."
Amber's e-mail reminded me of the time when my family gathered around our black-and-white TV to watch the one public television channel that was broadcast from 5 to 10 p.m. There was no pay-per-view or 300 channels to choose from, and we couldn't "log on" to watch YouTube videos. We read books for entertainment. Instead of texting our friends, we had real-time conversations at the dinner table. We went out and played softball, cricket and badminton (for fun!), and we waited while the phone rang and rang and rang. And then we called again.
For the millennials, though, wireless is the norm, texting is the new e-mail and voice messages have always existed.
To keep this generation engaged, professors are being forced to change their teaching methodologies. "You've got to know what students are doing and how they consume technology in order to connect with them," says Ted Coopman, communication studies professor. "I have had to learn how to use YouTube, write a Wiki and build a website -- you can't just show students a movie in class or give them something to read anymore."
"We're used to a certain amount of immediacy," says Mark Van Selst, SJSU psychology professor. "Because we're connected all the time and people are able to interact and give a fairly fast response, that becomes the expectation."
"I'm connected" used to mean "I'm online." These days? It could mean being part of any of the following: Facebook, LinkedIn, Orkut, MySpace, Habbo, hi5, Flixster, Xanga or a plethora of other services. Welcome to the world of online social networking! Andrew Wood says: "We are more connected to more people in more ways and in more places than at any time in human history, and that's wonderful; but the connection is often only at a surface level."
I have 115 friends on Facebook and 154 people in my Orkut network -- all people I have met and known at some point in my life. I love the fact that I can look at their profile updates, go through their public photos and scroll through their Walls or Scrapbooks to see what's going on in their lives. But that's not what Professor Wood is referring to. He's talking about people "friending" strangers based on mutual interests or because their profile photo is cute.
Amber, the 20-year-old radio-TV-film major, tried to explain this phenomenon in her e-mail. "We really only relate to people in the environment we meet them in … going out to dinner with people from work usually involves conversations about work and a little chat about other things. 
That is only a small sliver of someone's thoughts, ideas and personality. I think a lot of relationships built in person are too reliant on the distractions around them. Sure, it's possible to make deeper connections with people while in these environments, but communicating online allows for this to happen without the small talk and fake laughs."
Although he's never met them in person, Kyle Hansen, a recent journalism grad, communicates regularly with a group of college newspaper editors whom he befriended through their blogs and now keeps in touch with via e-mail and Twitter. "Friendship with them is different from real-world friendships," he typed during our online chat. "I don't talk much about my wife or family online but I do talk about work and computers and news … even politics and religion. It helps broaden horizons. We get people's experiences in different parts of the world instead of being stuck in our little bubble."
"Staying in touch without physically being attached seems to be the way people want to communicate," David Chiang, 20, a political science major, e-mailed. "In the past, people wouldn't be able to look on a screen and see who's free to chat or read their ideas on a blog or go through someone's daily journal or even share pictures. Now, keeping in touch or organizing a party doesn't require tons of phone calls -- just a text message or Evite does the trick. The concept of on-demand content and at-will communication is what sets our generation apart from our parents."
And yet many of those parents (and grandparents) are changing with the times and now prefer to keep in touch the "newfangled" way. Kyle Hansen's 93-year-old grandfather, who has lost most of his hearing and therefore doesn't like talking on the phone, e-mails. And when Kyle's mom needs to know what he's up to, she reads his blog.
My own mom had never touched a computer until three years ago. Forgetting (or ignoring) the time difference between Delhi, India, and San José, California, she'd call at 3 a.m. to ask what I had had for dinner. After I bought her a laptop and taught her how to use Google Talk, the phone calls stopped. When she comes online now, she uses the lingo of the "thumb generation" to ask what's going on in my life. "Sup?" she types.
From "What's up?" to "Wassup?" to "Sup?" Our language is getting pared to the bone.
"Yes," admits Andrew Wood. "The media is making it difficult for people to be as thoughtful … Look at the rules of spelling, punctuation and grammar. Why use a semicolon when texting? Just put a dot or a dash or just go to the next word. The value of correctness is replaced by the value of speed. I can, therefore I do."
He's right.
On my way home from work, because I have an iPhone I can (and do) scan news items and receive social networking updates. Some people sleep while taking the light rail; others gaze out the window. Their disconnectedness from the online world makes me feel a sense of calm. But the calmness lasts only a second.
The phone buzzes. It's my husband, who's just landed at the airport, texting me: "What's for dinner?"
Hmm … I better send a tweet out for ideas and check my RSS feed on recipes.
- Mansi Bhatia
a free social networking and micro-blogging service
a 140-character message that is posted on Twitter
a micro-blogging website similar to Twitter, but with its own timeline
a variation of a blog that favors shortform, mixed-media posts that include links, photos, quotes, dialogues and video on a website called Tumblr
an image- and video-hosting website to share personal photographs
a social networking, micro-blogging and lifestreaming service similar to Twitter
a social networking website where users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school and region to connect and interact with other people
an online address book service that provides automatic updating of contact information
stands for Really Simple Syndication, a file document that updates itself as the content on a website changes
a web-based aggregator, capable of reading RSS feeds
the generation born between 1982 and 1994
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