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In The Disappearance of Childhood, Neil Postman (1984) argued that television erased the boundary between the social categories of childhood and adulthood. Since television requires no obvious skills to understand it, nor does it make complex demands, it does not structurally segregate audiences based on ability to decipher in the same way that literacy does. The mythos surrounding computer technology is that it is a technology for the young -- for those whose synapses and cultural preferences are still malleable. Seemingly, technology and software changes so rapidly that a generation associated with a level of computer literacy turns over in two to three years. It is not surprising then that representations of computers literacy are associated with the youthful, yet-already motivated, minds of children.
Like television the Internet further breaks down the barriers between adults and children making the realm of knowledge associated with adulthood available to children. Moreover, these ads represent children as prodigies unleashed by the power of technology. In fact, a reversal takes place in which the child is now smarter or at least better equipped than the adult. Computer literacy becomes a form of cultural capital that further collapses the social hierarchies built upon age.
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