I noticed years ago that friends of mine used youtube as an educational resource, not just as sheer entertainment like I did at the time. They saw it as a tool to find basic information from how to fix your car to how to tie a tie. Information that I felt was in the dominion of parenting. I used to pity these friends of mine, thinking how sad it was that they simply couldn't turn to their parents and ask for advice on certain challenges that arise with incoming adulthood. Then I began to notice the resentment from my own parents when I made what I assumed to be a reasonable demand of their time: I simply wanted them to take fifteen minutes (sometimes an hour if I felt it was really important) of their day to explain something to me. Something they had done hundreds of times before. Something they knew inside and out. I just wanted them to show me how they did it so I could do it too.

I noticed their irritation, their evasiveness. And I noticed how they pushed me toward the internet to find the answers.

Don't get me wrong - acquiring straightforward, accurate information is one of the main reasons I love the internet. It is intellectually liberating and that is glorious. It's just funny, isn't it? In a way the internet steps up to fill these voids left from emotional and pedagogical neglect.

When you think about it, so many programmers, designers, and other masters of specific computer skills usually do bootstrap their way to actual, functioning competence with no real guidance but online tutorials and communities. More often than not there is no mentor. There is no apprenticeship. There are only pages of information sitting in cyberspace and you. I don't think the boomer generation will ever understand the precarious, isolated culture they built while pursuing the American Dream 2.0.