Eldering; about that Generation Gap....
A while back, in the context of "communicating across the Generation Gap," a number of you (a) disagreed with my contention that the gap is wider than it has been since the arrival of the first generation that took literacy for granted, and (b) asked me to explain why I perceived the gap as so vast. I thought I'd give that explanation a try this morning, with the caveat that I'm well aware that there are many different younger generations and that what I say doesn't apply universally. Most of my interaction with the younger generations is of three kinds: with my twelve grandchildren; with the youngsters [for me, that's people from roughly age 12 to age 50] who go to science fiction conventions; and with the readers of this journal. That may not be a very representative sample, but it's reasonably numerous.

The world I was born into was so different from today's world that it might as well have been Mars. I was a child in a world where a long distance telephone call was a Very Big Deal. A world where you and your family would get all dressed up in your Sunday best on weekends and holidays to "go for a ride in the car," and that was a big deal too. A world where -- with a very narrow range of exceptions that I knew nothing at all about -- there was literally nowhere to go after midnight outside your home, because everything was closed, locked, and dark. A world without air conditioning. It was most emphatically not this world I live in today.

It seems to me that there are three major differences that define the Generation Gap as I perceive it, and that make it seem so vast to me: the radically different understandings of time, and of space, and of what -- for lack of the right word -- I'm going to call privacy.

For the youngers, now, time is pretty much irrelevant. There's nothing they could be doing at nine o'clock in the morning that they can't be doing at two o'clock in the morning, or any other time whatsoever. Everything is open, unlocked, and all lit up 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. If they don't want to try to reach a friend because they know that friend is sleeping and has a day's work ahead, no problem -- they just reach out to friends who live in parts of the world where it's an appropriate time for socializing. That's a semantic revolution. There's no way I can make my grandchildren understand how alone people used to be in these United States from midnight till dawn, or how long it took us to find out about things that had happened, or what all the vocabulary of time -- words like "early" and "late" and "schedule" and "slow" and "fast" and "during" and so on -- meant to us.

For the youngers, now, space is pretty much irrelevant too. They don't yet have a reliable "Beam me up" device, but it doesn't really matter, because even if one of their group is in London and another is in Detroit and another is in Beijing they can still be what my generation would have recognized as "together." They can be talking to one another, they can be watching the same movie, they can be playing games, they can be involved in the most intimate shared activities, and where they actually are -- in the sense my generation understands "actually are" -- doesn't matter at all.

Which brings me to the "privacy" issue. Wrong word entirely, but I don't know what the right word is. The youngers are perfectly comfortable being "together" all the time, linked by their cell phones and their laptops and their PCs, even if they're all doing quite different things. There was a comment in this journal some months ago explaining to me that nobody considers it unusual or rude if -- while five of them are in the same room being "together" in my generation's sense of the word -- two are IM-ing with other people not present in that room, and one is blogging, and one is talking on a cell, and another is playing a videogame with a whole bunch of people not present in that room. The whole world, potentially, is with them, and that's fine; they're comfortable with that. For my generation -- to the extent that I can qualify as a generic representative of that generation -- that is as alien as a picnic on Mars.

This is a very difficult topic to write about with any kind of clarity... even for a science-fiction-writer-linguist.

(Post a new comment)

	mrissa 2008-01-18 02:34 pm UTC (link)
	I think if you talk to younger folks who are having a romantic relationship across that distance, you will hear from them how very much it still does matter. (Reply to this)(Thread)(Expand)

(no subject) - redbird, 2008-01-19 12:45 am UTC (Expand)

(no subject) - silkov, 2008-01-19 04:49 pm UTC (Expand)

(no subject) - leora, 2008-01-21 10:48 pm UTC (Expand)

nancylebov 2008-01-18 02:39 pm UTC (link)

Possibly related: we have secret ballots, but people seem completely comfortable with talking about their votes. Were they always this public about their votes? There is (or at least was) a tv show where people could get free paternity tests in exchange for their reactions being televised. I grant that it isn't as universal as checking your email while talking on the phone. I'm probably taking "privacy" a little more literally than you're using it. I'm still somewhat shocked at that show. I'm 54. (Reply to this)(Thread)(Expand)

(no subject) - (Anonymous), 2008-01-18 03:20 pm UTC (Expand)

(no subject) - nekosensei, 2008-01-18 03:53 pm UTC (Expand)

(no subject) - rosalux, 2008-01-18 05:10 pm UTC (Expand)

	roseross 2008-01-18 02:42 pm UTC (link)
	I think a lot of the changes are inevitable with overpopulation. Nearly seven billion people on the planet -- those who aren't adapted to living in a crowd are going to be overcome with stress related illness. And, come to think of it, many people are. (Reply to this)

damedini 2008-01-18 02:48 pm UTC (link)

I get what you're saying... and I also don't. At 40 I remember enough of a long distance call being a big deal (person to person as a new thing, and always requiring operator assistance). But the time and scedule parts, not so much. I grew up in a GM factory town and many business had to be open 24 hours, or at least very late, to accommodate second and third shift workers. The town I'm in now (Toronto) is just now thinking of changing laws so that stores could be open 24 hours 364 days a year. The idea is to attract tourists, but I'm not impressed. Workers will be forced to work holidays and extreme hours, at the expense of their lives and families, but it will mean (well, hopefully) more jobs and more demand for workers, perhaps leading to slightly higher wages and better conditions in a "seller's" market. When I first moved here, Sunday "blue laws" were still in effect and you couldn't even buy a gallon of milk on a Sunday. Only Chinatown was open. It took a lot of gettig used to for me. Looking back at what happened during the lives of your generation and the one before yours (planes, rockets, moon landings, TV, computers) my mind boggles. I look forward to looking back at my life when it's a bit longer and examining the changes that have occurred. (Reply to this)

	naath 2008-01-18 02:50 pm UTC (link)
	My mother remains astonished that I can "talk" to people by typing at them and get to know them without ever "meeting" them. Although I do think that even us plugged in youf like to sometimes meet up in person - we need cuddles too. (Reply to this)(Thread)(Expand)

(no subject) - dolmena, 2008-01-23 06:12 pm UTC (Expand)

glaurung_quena 2008-01-18 02:59 pm UTC (link)

Don't forget that young people nowadays, who take cell phones and GPS for granted, are rapidly losing the conception of what it means to be "out of touch" or "lost." And the concept of "being alone" involuntarily is also dying. And it's not just the kids you have close contact with; there's much more to support your thesis in this (highly interesting) article: Say Everything, by Emily Nussbaum of New York Magazine. Nussbaum thinks that the internet is creating the first real generation gap since the 60's, and I don't think she's all that incorrect. In the 60's, the generation gap was brought about in large part by music (or at least music was the standard bearer of a host of other less easily labeled cultural changes), with the gap being between those who "didn't get it" and those who understood and embraced the music of the era, and the cultural changes that it brought with it (eg, the willingness to participate in culture by groups of a different race and social class than one's own). Today, it's a gap between those able/willing to adapt and adopt new technologies (and the cultural changes they are bringing with them) and those who are not. The key point being, I think, that in both cases, it wasn't necessarily a gap between ages so much as a gap between those who were set in their ways and unable to change, and those who were flexible and able/willing to change their attitudes and behaviours -- something that correlates strongly with generational age differences but is not the same thing as age differences. (Reply to this)(Thread)(Expand)

(no subject) - sculptruth, 2008-01-18 04:04 pm UTC (Expand)

(no subject) - dark_phoenix54, 2008-01-18 06:54 pm UTC (Expand)

(no subject) - voxwoman, 2008-01-19 01:14 am UTC (Expand)

(no subject) - leora, 2008-01-21 11:36 pm UTC (Expand)

Response to glaurung_quena... - ozarque, 2008-01-19 05:45 pm UTC (Expand)

ciardhapagan 2008-01-18 03:19 pm UTC (link)

Actually at 41 I'm sort a bridge between the world you grew up in and the one the teens and twenty-somethings grew up in. My childhood (especially before my teen years) had some of the same factors yours did. I understand what you are talking about. (My mother was born the same year as you were, and I was quite close to her, especially from my mid twenties onward until she passed away in August 2005) I grew up in an suburban border southern enviroment (Louisville, Kentucky) what we had from midnight to dawn for company in my teen years if you weren't a "druggie" at a party, was FM radio, back in the "Album Orienated Rock" days, when the djs were local and only about a decade older than you. You could call them up and "shoot the breeze" with them. There wasn't really an generation gap between the majority of those born in the 1940's-1950's and the 1960's then or now. Even with my parents- born in the 1930's, once I got past my mid 20's I didn't feel that great a generation gap, I feel a far greater generation gap with people born from the mid 1970's onward than with those even 35 years my senior. It's not until it's someone born in the 1920's or earlier that I feel a definite generation gap. Knowing my parents and others born in the 1930's, you were "young enough" to have been effected by the massive social changes of the later 1960's and 70's. I saw those changes happen during my lifetime, for those of us in our 40's those changes formed our lives, we remember what it was like "before" and "during" much the same as you, although we were around 25-30 years younger. I think this is particularly true if you grew up lower middle class to poor. (Reply to this)

neonchameleon 2008-01-18 03:28 pm UTC (link)

You can talk through the net, but you can't hug through it. Until this is changed space really won't be irrelevant. It's just much less relevant than it was. And for a bit of reverse culture shock, I sometimes watch old comedies and work out exactly how much could be short-circuited with the addition of ubiquitous mobile phones. Also there are huge things we miss out on - chiefly the outdoors, senses of exploration, and senses of space and the exotic. But if this is the future, where are my flying cars, damnit! This is a very difficult topic to write about with any kind of clarity... even for a science-fiction-writer-linguist. Surely particularly difficult for a science-fiction-writer-linguist? (Reply to this)(Thread)(Expand)

(no subject) - salzara_tirwen, 2008-01-18 07:06 pm UTC (Expand)

dagoski 2008-01-18 03:33 pm UTC (link)

The worst part of this conceptual decrease in distance and softening of boundaries is that the people who developed the technology did not have so great a gap between your generation as we often do between those who have grown up with the products of our efforts. I'm really not sure what kind of world those of us who've spent careers building the Internet expected, but the consequences of pervasive communication networks surprise me constantly. For instance, my blog is read on three continents and in half a dozen countries(that I know of). Just like any other blog. This is alternately trivial to me(when I wear my network engineer/sys admin/software developer/telco engieer hat) and really, earth shaking, amazing(when I stop and think about Long Distance phone calls were always urgent when I was growing up). Long Distance calls when I was a kid either bore significant news or were used to keep up very important relationships. This was the 1970s and even then the distances were shrinking, especially physical ones with all the freeways. By the time I was driving, I could, by egregiously violating speed limits, drive not so many hours from LA and be in San Francisco. That used to be a fairly long train ride that required some thought. We take both cars and the ability to go anywhere on a whim for granted. By contrast, when my relatives were blown out of Oklahoma by the Dusters in the 30s, they had to cross the Mojave on a road the kind of made themselves out lumber carried on their Model A. They'd lay two planks in front, the driver would inch to the end, they'd grab the pair just cleared, lay those out front and repeat until they eventually found a utility line road that took them to a town. The impact of the Interstate Highway system cannot be underestimated because of the way it has trivialized distance. (Reply to this)

curtana 2008-01-18 03:44 pm UTC (link)

Perhaps peripherally related to what you have called the 'privacy' issue, this article from the NYT, "Generation Me vs. You Revisited". I certainly agree that my ability to keep in touch with, say, friends from my home town who now live in places very distant from me (Wales, New Zealand, Texas, far northern Alberta, etc.) is greatly enhanced by our access to the internet, so that I can read their blogs and chat with them online. We do still have time zones to contend with, and it's sometimes a considerable effort to get a larger group of people "together" online, because it seems someone always really ought to be sleeping/has to go to work/what-have-you. I'm sure if it didn't matter as much to me who I was hanging out with online, I could have constant virtual company if I so chose, but since I prefer hanging out with these particular people, we still have to co-ordinate things so that we can "meet up" and usually can't manage to do so more than once every couple of weeks (for larger groups of friends, i.e. 5-7 people - any two people can almost always find a time to talk whenever they wish!) However, if I have people physically visiting my home, I will spend my time with them, not with people online, though I might excuse myself for a second to check email/LJ if there's something important going on online - I don't personally perceive that as being any ruder than answering the phone if it rings. I would not, however, have an extended conversation with someone who phoned in the middle of a real-life gathering unless it was an emergency of some sort, and similarly I wouldn't neglect my guests to sit down at the computer and chat with someone online or engage in an extended conversation via LJ unless it was desperately urgent. But perhaps this is because I'm 29 and not 19? I don't know enough 19-year-olds to know if this behaviour is significantly different than theirs would be. (Reply to this)(Thread)(Expand)

(no subject) - badgerbag, 2008-01-18 07:38 pm UTC (Expand)

(no subject) - curtana, 2008-01-18 07:50 pm UTC (Expand)

Response to curtana... - ozarque, 2008-01-19 05:39 pm UTC (Expand)

(no subject) - leora, 2008-01-21 11:47 pm UTC (Expand)

voidampersand 2008-01-18 03:46 pm UTC (link)

Your descriptions are very clear to me. I am still thinking about how major the differences really are. They are about how people live, which I agree has changed a lot. But I'm not sure that values have changed that much. For example, my grandmother, who is older than you, exemplifies everything that I believe in politics. She worked for the New Deal, walked holes in her shoes for Stevenson, and took me to the big McGovern rally in San Francisco. She is and always had been awesome. If there is a gap between me and her, it is in how I measure up, not in what I believe and feel. Okay, I don't think she is much for rock & roll, but she loves music, taught me piano, and took me to the symphony when I was young, so I am much more conscious of what we have in common than the differences. (Reply to this)

sculptruth 2008-01-18 04:08 pm UTC (link)

I can see what you're saying and I tend to agree, but then I think about what glaurung_quena is saying and I believe it might have a lot more to do with flexibility on an individual basis. It seems a lot of people who are over 60 are incredibly in tune with technology and have had a much easier time adapting to the pace of culture than they would have in the 60's and 70's; maybe even the 80's. I would even go so far as to say with technology really beginning to take off in the 70's, the generation of people in their 60's and 70's now might be the first truly bridging generation of people to move fluidly through both kinds of culture. I would be interested to see if there's any truth in that idea? Now in terms of understanding a world completely different than it is now, you're spot on. There's no way people who are approaching their twenties (barring class or culture--I know this is a broad statement please forgive the generalisation) can understand a world unplugged. Edited at 2008-01-18 04:10 pm UTC (Reply to this)

6_penny 2008-01-18 04:11 pm UTC (link)

Its not just that long distance calls are not a big deal any more, its having more than one phone in the house. Ours was downstairs, int he front hall! I think that one of the subtle and significant differences today is that with virtual communities, people inhabit communities that are primarily built on shared interests. Before the communications revolution, while most friendships were so predicated, there also was the community of place which encompassed a diversity of tastes, educations , life styles and also with more of a mix of degrees of wealth or the lack thereof. And I agree, if this is the future WHERE IS MY AIRCAR? (Reply to this)

tammy 2008-01-18 04:52 pm UTC (link)

This is lovely and thoughtful. I've tried to explain this to my coworkers (who are decidedly not internet-people), but all they usually come away with is, "You have friends ALL OVER THE WORLD?" That is, however, not the point. You have captured the point. I don't ever *have* to be lonely. There is always someone, somewhere that I can talk to any time of day or night. It does completely and utterly change things. When I lived alone 5 years ago, I was truly alone. I didn't have IRC channels, MMORPGs, and IM buddies (I had a few IM buddies but most of the real life people I knew weren't internet compatible). Now, I'm living alone again and while I am essentially alone (save for my cat), I can still socialize. It's different but it is still human interaction with someone who cares about me. It isn't just me and the TV (and the cat). All in all, I think it's better. I'm more at ease with living alone. Someone will worry about me if I don't show up online. Someone will know what I'm up to when I'm home at nights. Twitter brings this to an even more "invasive" level. I can give a play-by-play of my entire day to anyone that wants to know. And for people who don't want to know the real time experience, I can auto-post it to my LiveJournal. It's like I have my own little Truman Show, hosted by me, where I'm the editor, producer, director, and star. So, not only do I not ever have to be alone, I can be as transparent as I want to be. As far as privacy, earlier in the week, a coworker was telling me that her daughter-in-law had publicly posted her ultrasound on her MySpace. That crosses the line of what feels invasive and inappropriate to me. I don't want to share something that personal with the entire planet, but I would post the ultrasound on my LiveJournal to a filter of my friends. Given the nature of social networking, I wonder if the coming generations really have any sense of privacy whatsoever or if the sense of privacy is just completely different than even that of my generation (solidly Gen X). There are parts of my life that are very, very private, but I also keep an online journal where I share some of my most private thoughts with a sub-group of friends. It's something very much worth thinking and talking about, but it's also worth taking a step back and looking at what impact all of this will have on our daily lives in the real world (Reply to this)(Thread)(Expand)

(no subject) - sunfell, 2008-01-18 06:10 pm UTC (Expand)

(no subject) - tammy, 2008-01-18 06:48 pm UTC (Expand)

pgdudda 2008-01-18 04:54 pm UTC (link)

Interesting! What you label as "privacy", I tend to think of as "attentiveness". I get very put off by people who have _entire conversations_ with someone not present when I am attempting to socialize with them. Even more so when they are so focussed on the not-present that they do foolish things like walk into moving traffic or miss important conversations like "don't stick your hand there unless you want it to become puréed". In regards to most of your other points, I'm on the younger side of that 'gap'. Though, at 34, I'm old enough to remember being unusual in making regular long-distance calls to my grandmother in Germany. And everything-except-restaurants being closed at 5pm. You couldn't go shopping after that, not even for emergency supplies, unless you were willing to pay gas-station prices, and those weren't always open either. I miss enforced quiet time. I keep thinking that the Jews may be onto something with their Sabbath... (Reply to this)

fiveandfour 2008-01-18 04:55 pm UTC (link)

Nothing too cogent to add, really, just a comment to say my initial reaction is that I quite agree with your thoughts, though of course I'd like to reflect on them further before committing myself to a total lack of argument to any of the points you make. I also don't know what the word is for that "lack of privacy" thing you were describing, either. I've been thinking of it in terms of always being "on". I'm not sure, but I think the fact that I was an only child and consequently had several stretches of time in my childhood where I was alone and "off" means I've noticed this aspect of what it means to be in constant communication with others. I crave pockets of time alone - without the requirements and constraints of what it means to be sociable - and it sometimes astonishes me to find how very much the opposite is true for people in constant touch with others, even if it is via technology and not face-to-face. I wonder what this will mean for the majority of a generation to have gone through their formative years always in touch, without the same concepts of time and distance as generations that have come before*, and (seemingly) without the belief that there is any value in spending time turned "off". *Not to mention the vast majority of the world where technology has not made the same changes to social structure and interaction as it has made in "first world countries". (Reply to this)

starcat_jewel 2008-01-18 04:58 pm UTC (link)

I am 51 years old, and I remember the world you grew up in. I remember when a long-distance call was a Big Deal; I remember dressing up in our Sunday best to take an airplane flight, and when there was an immense difference between clothes you wore to the office and clothes you wore on the weekend; I remember when there were no 24-hour convenience stores, let alone anything else. (The suburb where I grew up still has an ordinance specifically forbidding any retail business from being open after 9:00 PM. I wouldn't live there now.) I consider all of these changes to be improvements. By the time I was in my late 20s, long-distance calls were the standard method of staying in touch in my circle of (far-flung, fannish) friends; this was superseded over the next 10 years by e-mail, and then by blogs in the decade after that. I don't use my cellphone nearly as much as a lot of my friends do, but I don't want to return to the days without it either. About a group of friends being in the same room physically while they do different online things -- that's no different from the gatherings my friends and I used to have where we'd all bring our own books! There would be occasional conversations, but mostly we just liked the sense of "company" with other people who didn't think we were weird because we enjoyed reading. I like living in the future. I don't think it's either necessary or productive to beat young people over the head with "we used to walk 10 miles to school, in the snow, uphill both ways!" stuff. A world in which people are accustomed to chatting with friends who live in other coutries and cultures is going to be less subject to a lot of provincialist ills than one in which the only other people they know are all Just Like Them. (Note: there are still a lot of subcultures, even here in the US, even those with full access to all the technology we're discussing, where that kind of extended connection just doesn't happen -- and those subcultures are very provincial and isolationist indeed.) I think glaurung_quena is dead-on. It's not about age, it's about adaptability. Some of us are going right along with them. (Reply to this)(Thread)(Expand)

(no subject) - sunfell, 2008-01-18 06:19 pm UTC (Expand)

(no subject) - pthalogreen, 2008-01-20 04:53 pm UTC (Expand)

(no subject) - pthalogreen, 2008-01-20 04:55 pm UTC (Expand)

(no subject) - vvvexation, 2008-01-19 06:23 am UTC (Expand)

(no subject) - leora, 2008-01-22 12:04 am UTC (Expand)

(no subject) - beckyzoole, 2008-01-21 04:52 am UTC (Expand)

dcseain 2008-01-18 05:02 pm UTC (link)

I'm 37, a Gen-Xer. I remember when long distance calls were a big deal, and i recall clearly the one time we called our friends in Germany to talk, which was a really big deal. I was raised that you don't call people on the telephone between ~21:00 and 10:30, unless it was an emergency or urgent matter that had to be attended to immediately. It took me a decade to get past that hour-limitation on phone calls, mostly due to pressure from friends, and having friends go to school on the West coast. I remember when stores were open from about 10 to about 19 Monday through Friday, 9-20 on Saturday, and were not open at all on Sunday. I remember needing to wait for the afternoon newspaper, later the morning one, to get meaingful detail of something reported on the television the night before. I remember the fall of Saigon, and how different the reporting on that was compared to what we saw with the Challenger disaster. I do, at this point, take for granted the ability to hop online and have live chat with friends in Australia, Britain, Pakistan, and elsewhere on the globe. You have an excellent point that many of us, most 5 or more years younger than me, don't really know what isolation and boredom are like on a level of those of us who predate the internet. You understand that better than i do, of course, as the world i was born into in many ways has little relation to the one you were born into, despite it being then more simiar to back when than today. This is a take on generation gap that has only vaguely entered my awareness prior to this post, and a most valid take on it is. The world of my nephews - the elder is 8 - has little semblance to the world when i, my sister, our mother, or you, were 8. Despite the differences in worlds, he and his two-year-old brother, both prefer toys that their mother and i played with to most of the new-fangled ones. I'll stop now, before i go into full ramble. (Reply to this)

	tikiera 2008-01-18 05:11 pm UTC (link)
	Time does matter in anything but the handful of cities. Most things aren't open after certain time - 5 to 6 pm in smaller towns, 7 to 8 pm in larger ones. I have worked the night shift. It was very isolating. I could run down to a 7-11, but that was about it. And the streets would be empty and bare while I did so. (Reply to this)

rosalux 2008-01-18 05:45 pm UTC (link)

I think it's not a generation gap, or even a class barrier - I see the immigrant kids in the poorest neighborhood in the city coming in to the library to download music and email their grandma in Mogadishu - illiterate women have picked up cell phones, video-emailing, and podcasting like crazy. My mom is *way* more connected than me (she's so frustrated that I don't have a cell phone, it's ridiculous.) It's just a gap between the plugged-in and everybody else. Some people are outside the moat because of their personalities (my boyfriend is a 28 year old Linux programmer and not an online communicator at *all* away from work). Some are outside because their jobs don't give them computer access during the day. Some *would* be plugged in all the time if they could afford it, but can't. Personally, I used to be plugged in all the time and I'm unplugging as much as possible because I felt (feel) that it was undermining my local connections, just by stealing time from them. Also, I think by giving so much attention to people just like me (age/race/income level/political leanings) I was really limiting myself. It was just like the talented and gifted program all over again - I don't need more intellectual stimulation as much as I need practice with social skills and emotional intelligence, so I shouldn't be stealing time from the latter to devote to the former. (Reply to this)

shakatany 2008-01-18 05:59 pm UTC (link)

I remember about 20 years ago reading Still Forms on Foxfield by Joan Slonczewski. It dealt with the upheavals that came about when a planet settled by Quakers was re-contacted by Earth. The Terrans were always "contactable", in fact they were given demerits if they didn't answer questions posted by others immediately. I thought it a bit extreme but now I'm not so sure. The Terran culture depicted by Ms Slonczewski is apparently coming to pass today. As neonchameleon wrote, "And for a bit of reverse culture shock, I sometimes watch old comedies and work out exactly how much could be short-circuited with the addition of ubiquitous mobile phones." True - so many plots of old TV eps wouldn't pass muster today. I recall in 1984 watching Archangel on "Airwolf" use a phone in a briefcase and thinking wow and just a decade or so later everyone is walking around with Star Trek-like communicators. In the old days people walking down the streets talking to themselves were to be avoided; now they probably are on cellphones. I'm 55 but growing up in NYC (the city that never sleeps) in many cases stores and other establishments were open late or all night even back then. It's always being available that to me is the biggest change. In the old days you could just keep the phone off the hook and callers would think you were occupied with another call. Then came answering machines and call waiting and texting and all of a sudden you are at everyone's beck and call all the time. My poor cousin works from her home and is inundated with calls and text messages and e-mails continuously - there's no time she's "off duty". They say the Chinese have no word for privacy and now as they embrace 21st century technology they might never have need one. It's like we're on an accelerating roller coaster to where? Kurzweil's Singularity? What if we want to get off and simply smell the roses? Shakatany (Reply to this)(Thread)(Expand)

(no subject) - leora, 2008-01-22 12:14 am UTC (Expand)

	haikujaguar 2008-01-18 06:01 pm UTC (link)
	Just for a data point, I live in a big city and there still aren't that many places to go after normal business hours. (Reply to this)

pyesetz 2008-01-18 06:01 pm UTC (link)

As a child of the 60's, I *expect* the world to contain a generation gap (unlike what Margaret Mead claimed).  Now that I'm on the other side of the gap, I and many of us 40-ish people look bemusedly on the world of our always-connected children, a world that overall seems to have been improved by taking many steps towards the hopeful future that Star Trek envisioned. Still, when I go to furry meet-ups, I generally adopt the character of a "caveman", because I might as well be one compared to the highly-evolved college students of today. (Reply to this)

ashnistrike 2008-01-18 06:01 pm UTC (link)

What you're calling privacy, I would tend to call "presence," although I think privacy is also an issue. My students, I think, would call it "multitasking." (I'm 32; they're 18-22.) My religion (Neopaganism) often gets described as earth-centered, and environmentalism is supposed to be one of the central moral principles. I don't expect that to go away, but I expect it to be something my (hypothetical) children will also pick up from the surrounding culture. The principle I expect to have the most trouble passing on is the whole concept of "be here now," of sometimes just being where you are and not also three other places--and of having quiet time to be alone with your own imagination. (Reply to this)

nolly 2008-01-18 06:49 pm UTC (link)

I'm 31, and grew up in the rural South. Long distance phone calls were a big deal, but didn't necessarily require operator intervention -- though it was an option. We didn't get dressed up for rides in the car. We did some just-for-fun driving, but it was more to see things -- Christmas lights, waterfalls[1] -- than just to drive. Not only was there nowhere to go after midnight, there wasn't much of anywhere to go after 7, at least until the 24 hour Waffle House opened up. But that wasn't a youth hangout, more somewhere for truckers and people who worked graveyard or swing. My parents still, as far as I know, consider non-emergency phone calls after ~8 PM fairly rude; I can get away with calling up til about 9 their time, but apologize for it. I think there were a few later things in the small city in the next county, but not in our county. I'd guess that puts me towards the end of the transitional group between your generation and the teens of today. Someone my age who grew up in a more urban area would probably be a bit closer to the teens. What you call constant "togetherness", I would call constant availability, I think. At least, I'd call what I have and value availability; maybe it's not quite the same thing. I'm not constantly interacting with people, local or otherwise, but thanks to my cell phone, I'm available to my friends and family anytime. Perhaps "unavailability" would be more accurate than "privacy". When my great-grandmother died in 1994, just weeks before I graduated from high school, my parents had to call the school and tell someone[2], who had to find me and deliver the news. Calling home meant finding time on one of the payphones around campus, and receiving calls was quite a pain -- I missed several due to name confusion. A cell phone -- or even an unshared line -- would've made all of this much, much simpler, but teenagers simply didn't have such things then. I did have a phone in my bedroom at home, but I never had my own number; that wasn't unheard of, but was considered an indulgence at that time. [1] We lived just outside the Great Smokey Mountains National Park for many years. [2] I attended a public residential high school, so I was several hours away from my parents. (Reply to this)

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