Who are the kids of today? It was a great question asked on the Daily Show a few nights ago, and one that I thought about and even discussed with my colleagues at work. While the name just sort of found itself, the more fascinating question is, "What should we expect of this next generation?"
One of the defining qualities of today's kids, at least in the western world, is that we have a generation that knew how to use a smart phone before they could ride a bike. A generation that grew up in wartime, hearing whispers of 9-11, a reality they were born into. A world where school shootings were in the news every year, a nation with a divisive government spying on the people where no one trusted anyone else. Then there was another world, a cyber world, more real than the physical world. In this virtual world they found truth.
What does this do to the mindset of the wireless generation? Consider this rule of thumb; kids rebel from their parents and take after their grandparents. Looking through the years, generation x distrusted baby boomers as unrealistic idealists. Baby boomers felt betrayed by the greatest generation. How could they fight the good fight when they were fighting corrupt wars in Southeast Asia? The millennials couldn't understand generation x and its anarchistic tendencies towards government. It seems likely that the wireless generation will rebel against the progressive stance of the millennials. Why? The need for security. Like generation x they will feel the need to protect themselves from an intrusive government. If the government is sifting through text messages and e-mails, people will find a way to access the internet outside the grid. That is not the only threat. In the future, socialization will be found in the virtual world. It is the virtual identity that will need protection. Instead of physical threats, cyber-bullying will be the form of intimidation used by the wireless generation. Another danger is from viruses and hacking into computer systems, and even identity theft. All of these conditions will lead to very tight individual security nets, and a resistance to outside intervention.
When we look to the next generation, it will be brilliant and yet completely detached from what we would consider the real world. To make things more complex, we find the problem of informationism. The more we know, the less we know. The wireless generation will have infinite amounts of information to view. The question will be the quality of information. Any question or topic can be found online, however, if the information is faulty then so is everything from that source. As a result, truth becomes relative; it is whatever we want it to be. Thus the perception of truth becomes truth as a thing in and of itself, or, what has been referred to as the stand alone complex.
This new understanding of truth will lead ultimately to a new collective consciousness that is embodied in the virtual world. The kids today will find truth in the cyber gods and pantheons they find in video games that will shape their beliefs and interactions within the physical world. The truth of the virtual world will become as real as that of the physical world itself; a constant clash of identity, the real world and the virtual world one and the same, just separate parts of ones identity. This is the riddle of the next generation.
