A change of pace

Most (nearly all) of the threads here are based on a highly charged topic...

I thought I might cool it down a bit with a social opinion article I found quite amusing and goes with a bit of philosophy that many in my deep circles share.

https://daily.jstor.org/the-importance-of-technological-change-in-shaping-generational-perspectives/

I'm especially interested in what the more... senior people in here think. I haven't been around long enough to see the pre-super mass media age. AOL chat and reddit were just beginning during my time.

-SW

The Wheel of Time spins and what was once here will come again, but it won't be recognized.
(I know I paraphrased that badly... shush)

 

What worries me is the seemingly increased desire to divide ourselves. It seems that we have a need for a 'them' to place against our 'us'. Yes, each generation has different experiences, but do these differences have any real bearing on what we should think or are they just a convenient way to dismiss the thoughts and feelings of others?

 

I blame that more on the media, particularly the larger television news networks. They get their money by getting more people to watch them and in turn charge more to advertisers for commercial time. But as I said earlier in many other posts, American Journalism is increasingly Yellow... You would think they would have run out of piss-poor stories by now, but they seem to have mastered Sensationalism... no matter how wrong they are.

Now that I think about it, we use sensationalism somewhere successfully as well:

SO THAT'S WHAT WE ARE REALLY WATCHING!

We're watching a circus act!

 

Completely off topic, but what anime is the gif in your signature from?

 

Could you elaborate?

 

I do not agree with you on one aspect. This "blending" of generational bridging is in fact fuel by the various social disrupters that exist today that even a few years ago didn't even exist. And as more disrupters are added, this distinction of generational gapping will only based on well... which physical generation were they born.

And the thing of the social disrupters are is that no aspect of our lives are immune to disruption, or at least in first world countries.... and as the rest of the world gains more traction and access to these same technologies, they will experience a similar effect. The only difference would be: to what magnitude would the change be.

This list isn't comprehensive or exhaustive in any way, but are just a few examples of social disrupters that many people take for granted all over the world. 100 years ago, these technologies weren't even conceived; 50 years ago most were still in their experimental phases and barely even heard of; 20 years ago most were hit critical mass; 10 years ago, most headed to technological singularity

Airplanes
Cars
Computers
Medicine
Radio Communications (Not just talking FM radio here)
Television
Internet
Smart Phones
Social Media

All of these have one thing in common. They all re-engineered how people behave. If any one of these were to be removed from human society today, there would be a mass level social collapsing in any of the 1st and 2nd world countries. 3rd world level countries would primarily see repercussions in the amount of support they would receive and in some of those cases, a collapse in social anarchy.

It's from a fun Slice-of-Life Comedy called "K-on!" A fun 4-panel comic that became popular enough to get its own anime.

 

@Neophyte:

What kinds of societal changes are you referring to? Could you provide some examples?

@SecretWishes

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by, "This "blending" of generational bridging." Could you explain?

@everyone

It almost seems like the old chicken and egg question. Which came first, technological change or societal change. At this point I'm guessing it is probably a little of both. I am wondering why the divide? With many of these changes, both older and younger generations experience the same changes.

 

The blending is that people born of different generations have the same disrupters available to them... In many cases, it's often difficult to determine when a person grew up just based on their behavior today. Without looking at my profile and just by reading my posts, would you be able to figure out when or where I was born? (In a reasonable timeframe... dig long enough and you'll find just about anything on anyone)

There are so many cases of false/alternate identities that Facebook began a purge of confirmed alternative IDs and deleted millions of profiles. Even in here, I'm sure there are some people who shouldn't be here (minors for instance), but they haven't been caught yet. Some have been caught in the past couple of years, but I have no doubts that there are a few more lurking among us.

It's this availability that eliminates the generational identity and has blended one generation of people with another to the point where it is difficult to distinguish one generation from another... The word "peer" no longer means those close in age to you (generally plus or minus 3 years).

 

​

I wonder if it is something as simple as our relative situations in life.

When we are younger, we have invested little, and we are inclined to think of change as the facilitator of opportunity.

But later in life, we have accumulated 'things', be they material or intellectual or emotional, whatever has value to protect. And change then becomes something to be wary of.

​

 

An excellent thought... one I used to have a lot as well...

But I found in my dealings with people, that a person's mind is as versatile and varied as there are stars in the sky.

I have found people at all ages who think in one particular way or another. I know of a person who is in her 60's and she was chatting it up with someone who thought she was in her 20s... She found someone who was barely in his 20s and she assumed him to be in his late 40s...

The point is that the behaviors of people now and days no longer reflect the... "stereotypical" mindset or school of thought of a particular generation... or even decade. A 20 year old can have the mindset of a "traditionally" 80 year old and it's acceptable in society in general. I cannot even count how many times I've seen people cheer when a senior person performs in something that many people in their primes could not do.

The word "peer" has changed, and the phrase "act your age" hardly means a thing in many places. The number of those places will continue to exponentially grow until it is phased out as a typical statement, relegated to the pages of history as an "old saying" alongside many other historical catch-phrases...

 

That sums up a lot of my thoughts as well... The notion of generation(s) no longer applies to people, but rather the time they were born. I don't remember where I learned it, but I found a technology report years ago that said there is more than an exabyte of new data made everyday. For those who don't know how big that is... 1 million terabytes of data.

I'm kind of lost on your last lines though... "they elect......."
Mind explaining?