Can you make heads or tails out of this EP cover?
I was at breakfast last Sunday with some friends, both baby boomers. Inevitbly, the subject of social media came up. As I listened, I felt myself mystified and completely understanding. The jist of the conversation was that social media was dangerous, strange, poisoning America’s youth, and (on some level) contributing to their social malformation.
The whole discussion reminded me of the 1960s and rock music.
In the 50s, the last gasps of the Silent Generation found Rock-and-Roll. These were the kids who were too young for World War II, to either enlist or comprehend what was happening, who found this strange, wonderful music that spoke to them. Their younger siblings, the Baby Boom Generation, came of age during the 60s.
The Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers were both generations who appreciated a little good-old-fashioned musical rebellion. This love of Rock Music, coupled with the size of their generation, were as intrinsic to the socioeconomic upheavels, demographic shifts, and massive social upheavels that the times demanded.
The behavior of the Baby Boomer’s was incomprehensible to their parents. The term ‘generation gap’ was coined in the 60s, and referred to differences between children and their parents. Typically these differences were around culture, fashion, politics, and attitudes. The size of the Baby Boom generation made their choices matter in a way that America hadn’t seen before.
Thus, the end of the story of the 60s is that the Baby Boom Generation changed the world, irrevocably, from what it was before.
Fast forward to today. The Baby Boomers have been used to thinking of themselves as the young rebels, in charge of the gates of culture. But now, younger Barbarians have stormed the gates and are forcing another round of massive social change, demographic shifts, and rapid change to our cultural values.
The place where this shift is made manifest isn’t a concert anymore. It’s in a strange, ephemeral commons where Social Media users live and collaborate.
Social Media is not Rock and Roll in the sense of sexiness, drugs, stars, or even similar as a cultural form. The reason Social Media is the new Rock and Roll is the sheer incomprehensibility of these cultural touch stones to previous generations. Twitter is incomprehensible to a lot of people. So is Facebook. Googling sort of makes sense to almost anyone. Even people of an older generation who claim to understand these tools, often try to harness them in ways that are, frankly, baffling to people of a younger generation (I’m thinking of YOU Coca-Cola, and your Coke Zero campaign!).
To put it another way, our time now is all about the difference between the remote control and the keyboard.
I’m a Generation X kid. I’m right between the two, born just long ago enough that I know the previous generation really well, but just soon enough that I had a computer as a child. And from my vantage point, I can see very clearly that all of the kids born between 1976 and 2000 are the Digital Generation, and are on the cusp of something grand.
Kind of interested to see what happens next.
FYI: I’m going back to a regular ThinkPiece posting schedule, Tuesdays and Thursdays. For anyone reading out there.