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'Kids and IT means chaos not creativity'
Best of Reader Comments: iPod-wielding youngsters won't kill the techies

By Steve Ranger

Published: Thursday 28 September 2006

The "kids" are more likely to bring chaos and cyber-slacking into corporate IT departments, rather than a transfusion of innovation and enthusiasm, according to silicon.com readers.

Futurologist Peter Cochrane provoked a hot debate earlier this week with his keynote address at the silicon.com CIO Forum when he claimed young people are a disruptive force in business and will bring about the demise of the IT department as we know it.

When young people come into the workforce they don't want to be told by an IT department which hardware and software they can and can't use, he explained, and so the corporate IT departments will go "the way of the typing pool".

But many silicon.com readers didn't accept this vision of the future.

Many warned the only thing kids will create is chaos. silicon.com reader and computer consultant BillK said: "Has Peter Cochrane ever had a look at the tech swamp these techie youngsters produce at college or university? Virus and malware run rampant, illegal software everywhere, servers full of illegal music and films, porn collections... "

As reader Andrew Robb pointed out: "Unfortunately, many so-called tech-savvy youngsters run their own PCs riddled with malware and violated copyright material."

Another reader exclaimed: "I think I will employ a 16 yr old kid and ask him to transfer my SAP system to his iPod."

But software developer Anthony Hunt said the problem isn't with the kids - but the IT department's poor service for all users: "The more realistic concept is that intelligent users, ever more IT literate - regardless of age, will get fed up with the lousy service from their IT department and find ways to work around them or without them."

Others were less convinced by Cochrane's optimistic view of tech-savvy kids, with one saying children know less about technology than they did a few years back.

One reader pointed out: "Yes the hoodie-clothed youth-of-today is tech-savvy, in that they can text and MSN at the same time, can rip anything to an iPod, get ever-increasing hi-scores on Xbox/PS2, but that doesn't make them IT material. They are users of consumer products, not creators of it."

At least, as one anonymous correspondent pointed out: "That will make sure that IT professionals are in work for years to come sorting out the short sighted and ill researched 'fixes' these people are free to use."