Way back in 2005, I wrote a few columns about generation gaps and aging. You see, in a Web 2.0 world, where things can happen quickly, ideas and people get old faster. My grandmother sometimes refers to her four grandchildren (aged 21, 15, 10 and 3) as "the young generation." A generation, she says, is about 20 years and we're all in the same group.
I beg to differ.
My sister, who's only 5 years younger than I, is already a different generation. Lumping me with my younger cousins is completely out of the question. Think about it—my sister cannot remember large 5 inch computer disks, MS DOS-based games or life before the Internet. She and her friends had cell phones when they were 9 years old; I remember when cell phones were new technology. She aspires to own a Blackberry; I can still remember thePalm Pilot. In so many ways, she has grown up on technology that I can have grown up with. Even though I'm tuned in to the technologies, they aren't part of my mental makeup the way they are for her.
What that means, is that her world still moves at a faster, higher-tech clip than mine. My favorite "contemporary" bands are those I got to know in the late 1990's; in her world, contemporary is the last few months. With generations now about 5 years long, few trends can hang on longer than a season. We used to be able to identify trends by decade—the hair metal '80s, the punk rock '90s. We're only ¾ through this decade and I can already think of at least 5 musical movements that have come, dominated, and gone. And even when trends dominate, they dominate among smaller groups—groups of the new, shortened, generations; groups of the specific niche who happen to be at the right social network at the right time. Smart people are making a lot of money off these niches, creating boutique social sites, and niche brands. You can do a lot better getting a few people to be intensely loyal to you than you can getting everybody to be lukewarm about you. As I've highlighted in my columns, it's virtually impossible to be mainstream today.
Every individual is trying to be their own niche, their own brand, their own kind of alternative. If nothing else, Facebook and MySpace pages are a chance for teens, tweens and twentysomethings to brand themselves and rebrand themselves with each profile update. Indeed, I rebrand myself about once a day when I post on a wall or upload a new picture.
My professional life is likely to take about as much rebranding. My father points out how worried he is about our generation's careers—we're all going to have 5 or 6 jobs in the time he's spent in one company. We'll switch between fields, go back for more degrees and be forced to pack up and move cities. Web 2.0 and the real world that goes with it, is all about change and fragmentation.
Can anybody—from a company to a pop star—have staying power in a world like this? Sure, the people who can best cope with reinvention. The older world had some of those too. Think of Madonna: her many identities, her long and never boring career. In the 1980s and '90s her shape shifting was a cause for derision and surprise. Today, hers is the kind of identity stunt we'll all have to pull just to stay on par.
Strike a pose, Gen Y.
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Staying Power: Does anyone have it anymore?
