Many Boomers will remember Future Shock, a tedious tome by Alvin Toffler, in which the author pointed out that progress is accelerating. That is, the rate at which things have changed during recent history is increasing, and it will continue to accelerate at ever greater rates into the future. The implications of this phenomenon are enormous, including his assertion that people become “disoriented” as society runs away from them.
In his magnum, 1964 opus, Understanding Media, Marshal McLuhan proposed that “The medium is the message”---or the “massage”. The essence of this assertion is that the nature of the medium that delivers a message has greater impact than the content of the message. (If you think kids are threatened by violence on television, McLuhan says, “No---whether they're watching The Revenge of the Terminator, or Mr. Rogers, it’s the fact that they're watching television that affects the viewer.) McLuhan broke media down into two general categories: “cool”, such as TV or a comic strip, which requires participation by the recipient, or “hot” such as a book or cinema, which does not. This, within the context of our examination is moot, but we will nominally accept the premise.
The “generation gap” is generally thought to be the resentment/hostility, or “disconnect” that exists between generations; but viewed from the perspective of these two postulates, it would be the inevitable result of the generations perceiving the world differently. They think differently!
We know that the human brain grows at an amazing rate during fetal development. At times 250,000 neurons are added every minute! At birth, almost all the neurons that the brain will ever have are present, though the neural networks are undeveloped. These networks develop rapidly after birth, and by the age of two, the brain is about 80% of the adult size. By around eight years old, the brain has fully developed, and begins to shed unused cells. It is during our early years that the mold for our thought and perception is cast.
Let’s look at the supposed generation gap between “The Greatest Generation” and “Baby Boomers”. By current standards, the greatest generation, growing up in the teens and 20’s, had limited sources of information. They received the great majority of their information and learning from printed material. The motion picture camera was developed by Thomas Edison in the 1890s, but “talkies” didn’t emerge until 1927; so cinema had little influence. By McLuhan’s estimate, this would make the GG relatively “linear” in thought---inclined to be methodical and logical, perhaps long-term goal oriented. Reaching adulthood during the great depression also had a hand in their perspective.
Television, (McLuhan’s “cool” medium), became wide-spread in the 50’s and had a significant impact on “baby boomers”. This gave them a different perspective on just about everything. Boomers also missed the great depression and a couple of major wars.
This shift in media from linear print to electronic occurred over the course of a generation. Using Toffler’s model, we see the next significant shift in media occurring during the 80s and 90s as personal computers became wide-spread. “Generation X” grew up on our fully-developed, commercial television industry, then was influenced by the computer age.
The lid is blown off for “Generation Y” in the 90s with the introduction of the internet, and we see book-learning becoming almost obsolete. Walking into a large library on a college campus now, one may be hard-pressed to find any books!
Let’s take a look at the media timeline. Introduction of the printing press in the 15th century contributed to the Renaissance, but the church retarded the spread of knowledge to the extent that it took 300 years to arrive at the Enlightenment, which gradually replaced superstition with reason. (Some Republicans have still not arrived here.) There was no “generation gap” then. Progress occurred so slowly that it was imperceptible over the course of 20 to 50 years. Newspapers and magazines trickled in during the 18th century. The 20th century brought the introduction of radio, with motion pictures in the twenties, “talkies” in the 30s, TV in the 50s, computers in the 80s, the internet in the 90s. We will soon be looking at a "cyberworld" with technologically enhanced sensual inputs.
Meanwhile, a “generation” has remained roughly the same. Actually, people are now having children later in life, so the span of a generation has become slightly longer. Consider a rural, mid-nineteenth century teenager... education was limited, and probably his reading depended on whether or not his parents read. Class or caste systems retarded upward mobility. It was relatively easy for parents to retain the respect of their children who saw little upward mobility. The greatest to which the child might aspire was his parents’ station in life.
How different is that from now when a child of 8 or 9 realizes that he has skills beyond his parents’, this leading to access and knowledge beyond their imagination. Add to that the notion that his brain is wired differently because he’s absorbed almost all of his information from electronic media, and you’re looking at a real generation gap!
So what does this mean? If you’re a mid-50s manager and you have Generation X (mid-30s) employees who don’t seem to conform to your concept of “work ethic”, it may be that you don’t understand what’s going on. Xers are not big on plodding toward long-term goals, as you were. They’ve witnessed our failures, as we’ve tried to cash in on the promised good life. Life must work for them now. Success requires being an entrepreneur. Xers also grew up amid the dismantling of infrastructure and safety nets. They realize that big learning institutions won't pull them through---so, "do it yourself"---my skills, my resources, my judgment. It's risky to rely on others. Success for this generation is not measured by a killer job---it comes from a killer life. They are working on that today!
And what about Generation Y? A young adult today, maybe 9 or 10 when Bill Clinton left office, grew up with George W. Bush. He probably remembers nothing of previous presidents except Monica Lewinsky. This young person is politically jaded. His mind was formed sitting at his computer, playing computer games, and with instant access to the world through the internet. While a Boomer grew up expecting that he would prosper---that he would surpass the hopes and station of his parents---that if he studied he’d get a good job and have lifetime security and prosperity, the Yer sees nothing but trouble ahead: a troubled world, deteriorating environment, mountains of debt instead of trees, global warming, dying oceans, collapsing infrastructure, collapsing dollar, political chaos, over-flowing jails and a dysfunctional education system. Does he think he’s going to land a job that will bring him life-long security? Absolutely not! Compared to a boomer at that age, this young person is sophisticated beyond our imagination. But we see attitudes and work ethic that we can’t even recognize. This person is not convinced that our species will last 20 years, much less that he can land a job that will carry him that long. Things are changing so fast that aside from basic service work, there is practically no career that can be counted on to survive, much less ensure his security. This person is not going to tie himself to a job, knowing that in two months the job may be “out-sourced” or disappear altogether.
So the next time you're bewildered by a younger generation, before speaking down to them, please consider the possibility that you're a bit out of touch---that you don't have a clue what's going on for these people---and that they find you just as mysterious as you find them. The big difference is that while you're phasing out, they are phased in! It's their world; and if that world is a mess, it's probably our fault.
