I swam competitively for many years, and usually had little regard for synchronized swimming. With all of the other sports and entertainment around me, I just wondered what’s the big deal in all of that frilly water dancing?

Well, last week, as I watched the Olympic team synchronized swimming competition it occurred to me that I had not really watched synchro for a long, long time. The duration of the event, the often-impeccable display of synchrony in movement, the creativity in the performances, all amounted to amazement.

Synchro swimmers have certainly been just as artistic and athletic during all of those previous years; so, why is it that synchro just never did it for me before. What kept me from seeing the artistry and athleticism?I have a hunch…

That was then, this is now.

In a comment posted to a group discussion about collaboration in education, Birdie Newcomb (SL) wrote

“…almost every day, I’m learning…how to find out what I need to know, how to work with people, find out their stories, marvel at ingenuity or originality. It refreshes me. Why doesn’t it refresh students the same way?”

I have a hunch about this, too; but, will take a long way ’round…

In a recent post, Hamlet reveals an overall shrinking in the proportion of echo boomers in Second Life®. He goes on to present Feldspar Epstein’s notion that

Generation X’ers know how to play in the freeform manner that Second Life requires, whereas Millennials typically do not display that skill

My emphasis is on the word “display” here, because I have no doubt that the Gen-Y users of SL will show us all a thing or two about using this new technology.  These are smart kids.  But, with all of the technology and virtual world games around, maybe they look at the state of the technology and think “what’s the big deal?”

The advent of the World Wide Web also found many people wondering what is the big deal?, especially amongst the oldest of us. That was then. Now, it is a rare thing for me to meet someone who does not regularly use the Internet for something (and I spend most of my time in a retirement community).

Perhaps, in the same way that it took a long time for me to appreciate synchronized swimming—by seeing how far the sport has come— the echo boomers will only begin to invest themselves in virtual world building after the technology ripens a bit.