Ponderings on a Generation...

When I think to myself of what the best thing to call my yet unnamed generation, I realize it’s probably better to begin with figuring out who my generation is and what really defines the term “generation.” There seems to be in common agreement that a generation is a spectrum of people born in a certain age range who shared common cultural experiences. With this as a functioning definition, there still have to be some limitations. A generation had a specific end or beginning because history would sort of fall away with each generation – there was no super-effective sort of technology to preserve items of pop culture, which was lost with each new generation. Historically people within the same generation tended to share similar experiences with then current hardships or prosperities, which led the people of that generation to form like-minded mentalities or views.

For example, many people who shared a coming of age during the Great Depression grew up to be warier of taking risks with money since they had had a first hand experience with how difficult life was when money was really tight. The generation gaps are pretty easy to spot (baby boomers, Gen X, etc.) but the lines begin to blur at the introduction of the Internet to the general public in the mid-nineties. With the Internet’s facilitation, pop culture was rapidly changing and there were more ways to experience different cultures. The web had the power to bridge the age gap. While the Millenials might cover those born anywhere from the 1970’s to 1990’s, there is some sort of smaller generation gap within those barriers. MTV’s “The Real World,” which debuted in 1992, targeted 18 to 25 year-olds (MTV’s demographic). Today “The Real World” continues to run and successfully reaches that same demographic, only “the Real World” of today isn’t the same as seventeen years ago. Though “The Real World” was a memory of the Millenials, it was something different for the different ages within that generation. My generation remembers seasons of “The Real World” in the high double digits.

My generation remembers the time before and after Wikipedia…but still can’t imagine life without it. My generation is on the cusp. We are the transitional between a time of clear generational and cultural differences and a time of very vague blurring between the generations due to the ever-changing technological advances that allow us to communicate and thus change more rapidly. If the next generation were iGen, those remembering only a time where iPods ruled the world, then in order to name my generation, I’d have to reach deep into my memory to where the compact disk was the ultimate form of technology. Though CD’s are the standard physical storage mode for audio, they’re a rare breed what with the introduction of iTunes and other media players like Rhapsody and Pandora. The CD represented a modern but transitional period to go from the cassette tape to the mp3. That is who we are, Generation CD.