Generation Gap

I’m calling this my old man rant. I’m far from old, but I am beginning to see the gap between myself and next generation. I have reached a point in my life that I am now twice the age of many graduating seniors. And now that I work in an environment surrounded by the aforementioned youths, I am finding some alarming trends. Yet, I’ve been pondering this one for a while…see, I started back in 2008 when I was attempting to get back into writing (this does not bode well for this to be a continuous venture, if history says anything about my dedication to the medium of writing). So bare with me as I take you back to my first attempt and try to pick it up 4 ½ years later, although much of it still applies…

I know, I know, it has been a while…a long while. Hey, it’s me, you know me. I haven’t changed much, same venue - different room. I’ve been thinking lately, that’s what abnormal amounts of quiet will do to you (that’s why you need to turn the music up loud kids). I’ve got a lot of things on my mind and I needed to reach in there and scoop it out like ice cream - I’ll let you add your own toppings

I figured all my ramblings couldn’t be encapsulated into a single, all-encompassing blog, but I think I might have come up with a theme, it might be a stretch, hang in there with me, hope you are flexible.

So here we are, still in the 0’s but almost out into those fun teen years,’08 to be more precise (at least I hope to be done with thing before the end of the year). Life and technology are moving faster than anyone can keep up with (yes, even you). No amount of doping or HGH will help you keep pace. I have come to observe that even the separation of a few years can greatly characterize where we are in our social interactions. Using myself as an example, and I always assume that I am the norm, deal, I graduated high school in the mid-90’s, attended college thereafter. During that time, the interwebs was coming of age to the general public, beginning in the academic arena. I had access to Netscape, newsgroups, and the beginning of what we called the world wide web (the www for those of you who didn’t know why we have to type that in front of our web address). My major form of communication in college was e-mail (see here for more info). Upon graduation I got my first cell phone (still have the same # I was first issued amazingly enough) and used it sparingly to call friends and family (again, see above link).

…so its now 2012, see much of the above still does applies, sadly. And yes, I still have the same phone number…hit me up! (the end of that sentence just shows you how out of touch I am with the new breed of teenagers) Obviously I did not finish that train of thought at the time, thus is sat on the shelf, collecting dust, allowing time pass, allowing more technology to be invented, and widening the gap between past and present. With technology developing at such an exponential rate, a lot has changed in that time. But with any advances in technology, and far too often, societal changes are not considered for the sake of greater laziness. I’m this has been believed since our grandfathers’ grandfathers experienced life with electricity for the first time, “these elevators are going to make these kids all fat and lazy.” If they only knew how right they were. Thus the reason why I am calling this my old man rant. Now, picking up where my ’08 self left off…

‘12, not yet a teen but in that awkward stage of development when you start noticing “those changes”. I can’t even imagine what life must be like for the youth of today, and I interact with them on a daily basis. One thing is for sure, their cell phones are firmly implanted to their person. If desire is the aspiration of progress, then you’ll be seeing Bluetooth contacts with a heads-up displace of cell phone screens in the not too distant future. (helps that I have already implanted suggested that idea to my student) I crossed out implanted because in the future they are going to implant microchips into our brains so can remember things. Which is a good thing because I read some where that access to all these search engines, looking up information instantaneously, is causing our long term memories to shrink. Until that is accomplished there’s a chance that my students won’t remember my suggestion and we’ll remain left with young, distracted danger-mobiles on our American roads. Let’s hope we all make it out of our teen years.

Don’t get me wrong, many of these advances have provided our population with improved quality of life, longer lives, easier lives, allowing us to do other things with our lives. However, much to the detriment to society, some of these technological advances can create unintended side effects. And if you don’t see the rise in popularity of zombie-themed pop-culture productions as a metaphor for our mindless dependence on technology, then maybe you are one yourself. And that’s today’s word.