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In more temperate language Sherry Turkle 28 makes a similar point in a landmark paper entitledComputers and the Human Spirit,"Children in a computer culture are touched by the technology in ways that set themapart from the generations that have come before.Adults are more settled. In the worst of cases, they are locked 29 into roles, afraid ofthe new, and protective of the familiar. Even when they are open to change,established ways of thinking act as a braking force on the continual questioning socharacteristic of children." (Turkle, 1990 p.266)Whilst a recent critique of Prensky's work (Helsper and Eynon, 2010) sets out a wider range offactors causing a person's engagement or not with technology, the reality is that there was at thetime generational 'lapping' going on if not a generational gap (Helsper and Eynon, 2010 p. 505).It seems as though, there has been a narrowing of the gap in the last decade and adults are ablenow to keep up with younger people who are themselves entering adult life bringing with themtheir, sometimes, technologised learning styles:'... if being tech savvy is determined by exposure and experience, then collaborationand learning is possible in environments where younger and older generationsinteract.' (Helsper and Eynon, 2010 ibid)Perhaps this generational gap was never as great as Prensky assumed or perhaps he was superimposingon virtual/online/web-based contexts his assumptions about the 'disconnect' betweentraditional classrooms and their 'tech savvy' clients. Shortly after the publication of his work,Lynch was writing research-informed materials that were designed to give leadership and adviceon setting up virtual classrooms (Lynch, 2002). She notes, 'Moving away from a focus onourselves as teachers and focusing instead on the learner, we begin making the transition fromthe traditional knowledge transmission model to a facilitation model that enables us to involvestudents in their learning processes.' (Lynch, 2002 p. 32)28 Papert's attribution of his own learning to Turkle is important in the development of the discourse. That theywere married is a fact known to the community by his announcement of it in Mindstorms (Papert, 1993)29 It is worth noting that this is not the same type of 'locking in' as that enunciated by Brian Arthur (see above andWaldrop, 1992)96Simon Hughes Ph.D. Thesis (October 2012)