How my generation thinks (kinda sorta)
Author: Michael Higdon | 03.25.2009I read a lot of articles about how my generation (1983-1987 ish) and younger are doomed because of social media and all the changes. We apparently have short attention spans and all that jazz. Well here’s a video that puts that into perspective for all you 26 and olders (kind of).
Your generation would be less doomed if it stopped trying to claim it’s going to “save journalism” or “save the world.” Also, defining the 21st century less than a decade into the century is incredibly naive.
I realize having Nickelback as your generation’s music group and Seth Rogin as your generation’s visual image is a bitter pill to swallow.
But believe it or not, there was a world before 1997.
Well I think the “save the world” thing is two fold. One, your generation (not you specifically but people your age more generally) have thrust it upon us openly. Articles I’ve read say “well sorry we screwed everything up, I guess it’s Gen X’s job to fix [climate change, fuel dependency, politics, foreign relations, journalism, technology, morals, etc.].” I mostly reject that, but while we’re in that boat, might as well take everyone up on that offer. Second, I also believe most generations have felt it was their duty to “save” the world in the most relative sense. Meaning, they want to do things their way and their way must be “saving.”
I and my generation know there was a world before 1997. Believe it or not, I didn’t have a computer until then. I remember a different world. And I realize there was a world before me. I’m very much aware of history as I spend a lot of time studying it, including communications history. So I’m not sure where that comment is coming from.
The video was simply an illustration. Articles from older people generally bemoan the changes and talk about all these negative aspects. I think the video shows a more positive side of those changes.
I think I’m in Gen X, although I hate that stereotype.
I think there’d be less bemoaning, though, if it were more apparent these changes are positive or will be positive.
Speaking as a late boomer, I wish people would take a person’s age out of the equation.
Being older doesn’t mean dick anymore that being younger means dick. A person can be an ignurnt idjit at either age or stage in life.
The changes we’re all coping with, admittedly with varying degrees of success, have their roots before the second world war (Paul Otlet is a prime example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Otlet )
If you look beyond the limited time span of a single human life and think in terms of two life spans, we’ve come a long way.
Its like the current peak oil crisis. We’ve known since M.K.Hubbert in the 1950s that the oil was running out and when.
The use of rock-oil, a.k.a. petroleum, was a reaction to a peak oil crisis caused by the death of all of the whales. (That right, Rockefeller was an accidental environmentalist.)
It was a temporary stop gap solution. It’ll last about 300 years from first discovery in Pennsylvania to last sip in the gulf of Mexico but its finite. There’s no more commercially recoverable oil in Pennsyvania is there
Now we’re in the age of electricity and once we achieve some means of getting it from renewable sources, like sunlight, we’ll be set for quite some time.
The information revolution, since it is a revolution, is a mystery only when you don’t take a long enough view.
Yes, everything will change, completely.
Well everything that your grandfather grew up with has changed, completely. (Mine used to ride in a horse-drawn trolley because he had to. He bought one of the first cars in Montréal, Québec, Canada because he HATED horses. It couldn’t change fast enough for him.)
Its called creative destruction and its been an economic principle since there have been economists.
Don’t sweat it, There ARE solutions. You just have to apply them to the right problems.