Great post by John Scalzi: technology changes, but people don't really change.
Lots of technology has come and gone during the decade and a half between 1994 and now, but the belief that the transformational nature of technology has created a generation that other generations don’t quite get has apparently remained constant. Which is, of course, to my larger point: Technology changes, but people really don’t…
What’s on exhibit here is precisely what was on exhibit in the asg-x newsgroup in 1994, and was almost certainly on exhibit in similarly then-technologically-advanced media in whatever era you might choose to look at: A communal myth of generational exceptionalism: the belief (or at least a strong suspicion) that one’s social and technological accouterments, and how one uses them, signal a wholesale break from previous generations, and that one’s generation is therefore quite obviously unique and special.
But if there’s any benefit to getting older, it’s realizing just what absolute crap this sort of thinking actually is. Technology changes, social trends change, hairstyles change, but people – the actual human animals inside all that technology, sociology and tonsorial grooming — are the same as they have been for thousands of years. Grab a time machine, go back to ancient Egypt, and swap an infant there with an infant from today, and in twenty years you’ll likely find two people perfectly well integrated into their cultures because there is no difference in the human animal between now and then. Even within generations (which are an artificial construct in themselves, but never mind that now) there’s enough variation to drive you a little batty: The same generation that gave us the hippies went for Nixon in 1972, and that same generation gave us both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Go figure.
Don't buy into the idea that our generation is different from their generation or from the kids'. We are used to different stuff, that's all.
bearing blog 