“Couplands own Web site says of “Gen­er­a­tion A” that it “cham­pi­ons the act of read­ing and sto­ry­telling as one of the few defenses we still have against the con­stant bom­bard­ment of the senses in a dig­i­tal world.”

Asked if he views technologys effects on soci­ety and cul­ture as pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive, Cou­p­land tells Silicon.com: “Its nei­ther. Its inevitable and unstop­pable so the bet­ter ques­tion is how are we going to han­dle it–hide in a cave and bitch, or go out there and try to use it to make the world a bet­ter place? Sit­ting in a cave and bitch­ing is nei­ther noble nor roman­tic. Its igno­rant and pointless.”

And what of the lat­est round of Web 2.0 upstarts, Face­book, Twit­ter, et al.? Can they have an effect on soci­ety and morals? “Youre try­ing to impose morals on some­thing not on a moral scale. Thats like get­ting mad at the weather. Youre going to stop these things? Good luck.… So instead of bitch­ing we need to ana­lyze impact and try and fig­ure out what hap­pens next.””

“A favorite argu­ment among those who talk about the gap between Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y is that the youngest demo­graphic is more adept with tech­nol­ogy. Accord­ing to the sur­vey results, thats just not true.

Gen X employ­ees con­tribute to dis­cus­sion forums and social net­works just as much as their Gen Y coun­ter­parts. The use of blogs and wikis was either equal or dif­fer­ent by just a cou­ple per­cent­age points.

But the most sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence was not in usage stats. It was how effec­tive employ­ees are at get­ting new soft­ware to be accepted. 22% of Gen X said they felt they have the “clout in their orga­ni­za­tion” nec­es­sary to intro­duce new tech­nol­ogy, while only 13% of those under 29 said the same.”