Ryan ChartrandOut with the conventional innovations of yesteryear; in with the technologically decadent. Long gone are the days when television held society’s hand through the Technicolor kaleidoscope of cultural evolution. Today, we have the Internet for that.
So, for those of you anxiously awaiting the arrival of the next technological revolution to begin with a bang, assuming everyone remembers how “video killed the radio star,” let me be the bearer of some very informative news: the next technological age is here and upon us folks. Behold, we are in the midst of the iGeneration.
But it wasn’t always so. For those people scratching their heads, asking themselves, “when did this happen, and what does this mean?” I’m here to put the puzzle pieces together. Let us take a step back into a time when TV, comics and board games reigned supreme, before we plugged our souls into the World Wide Web.
As you picture that proverbial tumbleweed rolling down the empty streets of your mind, let me be frank and tell you why that is; before the Internet, there was nothing. No iTunes, no YouTube, nothing. Simply a vast wasteland of potential, unrealized by generations past. It was not until the iGeneration exploded on scene in the mid-1980s that the world embraced modernity to its fullest.
What is this new Internet generation, and who belongs to it? The “iGeneration,” as it has come to be known, supersedes the MTV generation of the ’70s and ’80s, and includes those people who spent their formative years surfing the Web for hours on end, making sure the words “library catalogue” became completely obsolete. Ladies and gentlemen, the iGeneration is us: you and me. So, for those of you who enjoy a hearty dose of good ol’ technology in fast-forward mode, here it is, we’re living it.
Emerging within the paradigm of a modern world, the iGeneration of today has embraced anything “i,” or Internet-related, toppling previous models of antediluvian advancement. With the birth of the Internet, modern titans such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft have inched their “isms” into mainstream culture, leaving us gaga for more toys to play with and more pronouns to pronounce.
If you don’t have an iPod, haven’t checked out Google Earth, or have no clue what Vista means to Microsoft, you are simply out of the loop and need to be informed. And don’t even get me started if you don’t have a MySpace page.
With new game systems like the Nintendo Wii and Playstation 3 popping up like mushrooms, combined with the technology of more MP3 players than we know what to do with, stimulation during this age of technological exploration is a non issue.
On the contrary, we are constantly being bombarded with stimuli, forcing many of us to hide out on the outer rim of social interaction in hopes of catching our breath.
But let’s be serious, I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is our time, our age, our generation, our lives. We are bound together by a social network driven by technology. So buckle your seatbelts people, we’re in this for the long haul.
Alexandra Bezdikian is a journalism senior with a minor in religious studies. E-mail questions or comments to albezdikian@gmail.com