The Googlization of Everything

Over on his blog, Print is Dead, Jeff Gomez writes:

... I might agree that being digitally adept maybe isn’t generational, but there’s no way you can say that kids today aren’t Digital Natives. It’s a fact. From the moment they’re born (under the watchful electronic eye of digital cameras and camcorders, not to mention the bevy of beeping medical equipment nearby), to every aspect of their ensuing lives (electronic baby monitors, video games, cell phones, digital watches, TVs, MP3s, the Internet, etc.), they will exist in an electronic milieu.

A hundred years ago, kids who were born were Generation Victrola; today they’re Generation Download. To argue against this is to swim against the tide of not only history but common sense. Because generations are defined by the world in which they’re born and nurtured. Whatever surrounds that generation is later what comes to define it. Because of this, someone could be said to have grown up in the era of Vietnam even though they didn’t fight in Vietnam, or never even gave it much thought. But the influence that Vietnam had on the books and music and movies of the time is resolutely inescapable.

Vaidhyanathan points out that just because someone was born within the accepted timeframe of what constituted Generation X, it doesn’t mean they had the same experience. With that I completely agree. Just because you were born in 1972 doesn’t mean you’re a carbon copy of Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites. Instead, stating that someone was born at that time simply means that they were exposed to the prevailing attitudes and influences which were omnipresent during those years (whether they were part of those influences or not).

But there are also more important and subtle shifts, generational gaps that both envelope and separate us without us even knowing. And, in many ways, these are the most important developments of all. For instance, last week’s tragic mall shooting. As I watched the news reports, most of which described the mall as a growing place of danger and paranoia, it caused me to reflect upon my own life and childhood. As a youth growing up in suburban Southern California in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, most of my weekends were spent at the mall, hanging out in the arcade or at the pizza place, or just wandering around for endless hours (during any of the mall scenes in either Valley Girl or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, I could have been an extra). In those days, the worse thing that could happen to you in a mall was that Asteroids might eat your quarter. Today, people go to the mall and get gunned down as they shop for Christmas presents. For today’s teenagers, malls (not to mention their own schools) can be a dangerous place. For me, they weren’t. So the meaning and length between my experience and theirs is indeed a generational gap. And its exists all around us in ways that far outshine the surface differences in music, fashion, or even anything necessarily cultural.

The bottom line is that no generation marches in lockstep; no era can be defined completely (the ‘20s weren’t roaring for everyone nor did everybody swing in the ‘60s, and surely someone was pissed off during the Summer of Love). Instead, the tags we give to generations are shorthand; they’re always just signifiers. To treat them literally is to mistreat them.

Here is the response I posted in his comments:

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I must take issue, however.

Malls and schools are not dangerous places. In fact, schools have not been safer in 50 years.

This is the problem. By focusing on the anecdote and the perceived trend, you define something you have not measured or certified. How do you know what a "prevailing attitude" is? And what if such an attitude (if measurable) does not match reality?

There may be a prevailing attitude that schools in the 2000s are dangerous. But the reality is that they are not.

Your story of growing up in California in the late 1970s and 1980s matches mine from Western New York at the same time. So we share some stuff. But how many poor or non-white young people in America at the time shared them?

These days, more than one out of four American children are born into poverty. Many of them are born to immigrant parents who do not speak or read English. How "digital" are they? Or do they not count?

Historical phenomena such as Vietnam matter to entire populations in complicated ways. They still matter. But slicing them into arbitrary age segments makes no sense.

Vietnam affected almost everyone in America who was 18 to 25 year old at the time. But it affected everyone differently. Those who served did not share the "zeitgeist" with those who resisted. Women and men experienced it differently. The poor tended to serve. The rich did not.

Everyone assumed in 1972 that there was some great "generational" mood or attitude that would pull voters to McGovern in the first election in which 18- to 20-year-olds could vote. Look how that went. Everyone was wrong.

By focusing on wealthy, white, educated people only, as journalists and pop-trend analysts tend to do, they miss out on the whole truth.

There was no "generation Victrola." Most children 100 years ago were born on farms and did not have running water, let alone Victrolas.

Shorthand is another word for stereotype. See Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion for an elaboration