Picture courtesy of TIME and Joel Stein
I love the power of the internet. I can send an email to London with a question and hear back from them within 24 hours. I can apply to a University overseas and open a British bank account just by filling out an online application and sending in some supporting information (that I, of course, have scanned in for future reference.) It is 2009 afterall, and I am a millennial, a mosaic, a prime example of Generation Y. I just had a conversation earlier about how our society has become such an information-driven society: we want information and we want it now. Five minutes isn’t soon enough. Get on your Blackberry, bring up the internet and Google what you’re looking for; if you’re fairly text adept, you can probably acquire any bit of information in 2 minutes flat. If that. After all, after Michael Jackson’s passing, anyone with the internet and a facebook or Twitter account found out within 30 minutes. It’s news and we all want to know — no waiting for the morning newspaper (how 1980’s), no waiting for the nightly news or a special report on television (how 1990’s); send us a text, shoot us an email, post a microblog on your twitter account or change your facebook status. We’re all watching you, after all; waiting for your juicy newsfeed.
Technology has given us the benefit of being supreme multi-taskers; we are a new generation of people. We can drive to a business appointment, while coordinating another appointment over the phone (using our handy bluetooth), while simultaneously updating our facebook status through our iPhone or Blackberry apps. If you’re not doing at least three things at once, you’re likely wasting precious time that will be take away from social networking later in the day. Being a product of society, I quite enjoy being able to multitask; I’m a firm believer in productivity: work smarter, not harder. If I can get five hours of work crammed into one hour, why not? That leaves me extra valuable time to hit the gym, make dinner, go grocery shopping, and so on. On the flip side, I think that this transformation has made us an incredibly impatient people; we expect everyone else to be multi-tasking to the same degree that we are, and if they’re not, we get frustrated. I think it’s natural. I find myself doing it, too, when I see people paying bills by check versus paying over the internet or handling what should be super quick matters in old-fashioned (more time-consuming) ways. Additionally, I think we have lost a huge human element in our world. Instead of calling someone to talk, we shoot them an email or a message over facebook or MySpace; who has time to talk anymore? Instead of normal, face-to-face interactions, we rely on the efficiency of conference calling, Skype or internet conversation. It is undoubtedly the faster way to do things, but we don’t seem to have the same regard for people as we used to; definitely the downside to being a millenial. Our generation (Generation Y) has been described as the mosaic generation. Why? Well, because we don’t really have one attribute that defines us as a cohort; we are a complex generation that proves to be a mishmash of many different ideologies. We don’t all believe in the same things because we don’t have to. We’re ‘post-modern’ and don’t think linearly. Of course that helps add to the brilliance, I’m sure, but how can we think linearly? We haven’t been taught that way. We are the ultimate multi-taskers. We have been taught that productivity is key, and if we have paid attention to society at all, we recognize that our society has made being productive so much easier. I run into 8-year-olds who can download music while talking on their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cell phones… I mean, really? What 8-year-old needs a cell phone? Apparently kids in our society, because let’s be honest, we have to get them started early. They’ll learn the ways of the world soon enough after all. Plus, let’s face it, they need to call their parents to make sure they can coordinate their calendars for back-to-school night. Even 8-year-olds have to notify their Outlook.
Please note: As I am writing this, I’m drinking a cup of freshly brewed coffee, warming up dinner and putting my laundry away. Case in point.