It’s been a while since I truly sat down and thought about the impact the Web is having on this generation. My generation, and mostly every generation before me thought they were the “haves”, but it turns out we were just another group of have-nots. My oldest offspring ask questions because they want to know what things were like for me before I grew up and grew old (I am not, for the record, old and I never will be).

Most 2.0+ sites give the customer the added bonus of voting on a specific article, logo, video, event, etc. They are the hottest sites and are very savvy at creating an important interactive environment where the user is king. Content, it seems, is starting to run a close second.

This is NOT a bad thing since in most cases the customer is truly driving the content.

I live in a democratic environment and I love the freedom to choose. I think what makes me feel better about living in a sometimes hated, sometimes loved, sometimes envied country is the very fact that I can say and do what I like within the boundaries of common sense and law.

User experience, however, needs to be created in such a way that the next generation doesn’t simply expect each person and each thing in their way to bend to their will once they step away from the keyboard. It’s a tricky problem I see starting already with some younger Web customers and I hope that the current generation works on that part of the policy for their sites.