While running some speaker wire (an annoying task) I came to think about my young niece and nephew. I thought of the photos of them with electronic toys galore and a little boy talking on a cell phone while working on his play PC. It got me to think of how so much can change within a generation.

There has always been a “generation gap”, but I think that the gap is widening in the technology-driven parts of the world. Heck, I look at developers only a few years younger than me who have never known a computer without a mouse. Never known a non-GUI operating environment. And so on. And so, here are a few things that kids take for granted, and which will alter their perceptions of the world…

• Cell phones. Everyone can talk to anyone whenever and wherever. Leading to an almost pathological need to always be in touch. It has also resulted in the growth of an almost incomprehensable texting language. Some may see this as the downfall of written language. I think it’s more interesting than that, as it provides a perfect example of a language growing (and illustrates the virtues of a dynamic language like English versus one which fears new words–I’m talking to you, French).
• The Internet. Books can be writen on its virtues and vices. I wonder how it affects intergenerational interactions. When face to face, or over the telephone, it’s easy to judge another persons age (at least generally) and frame your conversation accordingly. On the Internet, it’s next to impossible. The same goes for communication in general–it’s extremely difficult to judge and adjust a conversation through an e-mail. How many misunderstandings have occurred due to a misinterpretation! Will this be a hinderance to the next generation, or will they, like generations past, come up with a novel solution to the problem?
• Security Uber Allis. Cameras in every public place. Near strip-searches in airports. Unmonitored tapping of telephones and data connections. This driving need for security over liberty scares the living shit out of me. Not because my personal rights are getting eroded (and they are), but because children growing up today will take this idiotic security as “normal” and “necessary”. If you’ve never had something, how do you know what you’re missing?

Here are a couple of things they will able to take for granted, regardless of naysayers:

• Books. Every year I hear about how books are going away. I hear about how some new e-book or Kindle will Change Everything and destroy print. Well, come back to me in twenty years and we’ll compare my Folio edition of Culpeper’s Herbal with your e-book. Or perhaps we should dig up the 1652 edition. Print has remarkable staying power. It’s not that I don’t like the e-books (I own a Sony Reader)–they are great for holding a ton of stuff in a tiny space–but I know that my paper books will be readable when I’m old and gray. My Reader will be in a museum, long dead.
• Music. And, dare I say, LPs. Downloads will destroy music industry! Artists won’t be able to make money! Well, I guess that explains why there is more music out there than ever before. It’s remarkably easy to find new, interesting, and innovative music (thanks to the Internet). Recording equipment that could only be afforded by Big Music can now be found on a laptop computer. Heck, even our old friend the record is coming back, being fueled by nostalgia and the ability to “hold” the music in your hands.
• The World…

Let me tell you a story about The World:

During the early part of the 20th century a writer named Stefan Zweig lived in Vienna. The city was in a golden age, full of creativity and security. He wrote a number of novels and biographies thoughout the twenties and thirties. And then Hitler rose to power.

Zweig, a pacifist and a Jew, was able to flee Austria in 1934, living in England, the United States, and finally ending up in Brazil around 1941. Around that time he wrote:

Today, now that the great storm has long since smashed it [Vienna], we finally know that that world of security was naught but a castle of dreams; my parents lived in it as if it had been a house of stone.

With growing dispair, and the feeling that European culture was gone forever, Zweig and his wife committed suicide.

That was 1942. In thirty nine months Hitler and the Third Reich were destroyed.