Will our generation be viewed favourably or unfavourably? Which people will be given historical longevity? With the internet, is it possible that historical study of our generation is going to become more accurate?

A few important questions for this discussion would be, when does our current era start? Is 9/11 a big enough turning point? Or is it a conglomeration of world wide "era's" so to speak? So for Europe, from the inception of the Euro; for Japan did the falling of the LDP start a new era?

I'd say that the current events in the Arabic world might be big enough to end our current period, and move to a new one.
So i'd say 9/11 to now is a pretty interesting little era, with big players like Bush, Obama, Blair, De Silva, Mbeki's fall, Pakistan's revolution all being huge moments to name a few.

Culturally are we a success? I mean whilst we got Beiber, 1969's most listened to song was by the Archies not the beatles, led zepp, etc. So we also have Coldplay, continuity of Radiohead etc..

Well, we're sure to win the generational Apathy Olympics.

I dunno about that; the Iraq wars were hugely protested out here in the UK. In USA there was a hugeee movement to get Obama elected, or at least thats how its reported over here.
I think in general apathy hasn't really spiked- the hippies of the '60's, and miners/trade unionists of th e'80's definitely made up a small proportion of the population.

However many kudos's on the quote. Definitely lol'd

In a word, victims (in so many ways).

I guess we wont be. Like the generation of the early 20th century we will be the forgotten between stuff generations. Those who reap what we have sown will be blamed/credited.

You may be right, but I don't know. The Gen Xers got political about some things, too.

But I think with respect to life, we're much more apathetic. We don't want to start families and ****, we don't really know what we want to do. Work generally feels pointless and slightly absurd, many of us are just working to live (and by "live" I mean get drunk, play XBox, bang chicks). Being respectable seems nice and all, money helps, but I don't think even those of us who have good careers really take pride in them the way people used to.

We're culturally anarchistic; even a dramatic word like "anomie" may apply.

I could be wrong, and maybe the next generation rolling up is going to have it worse, but it's like the Gen Xers were concerned about having an aim or purpose, and resentful that there wasn't much out there. We just don't give a **** in the first place.

I would definitely not say "our era" starts at 9/11. I would say our era starts in the early 1900's. I think you start it at the time the fed was created along with other inventions that changed our country/world around that time.

I think we will be viewed favorably but then how we ****ed it all up.

Nine Inch Nails, Jefferson Starship, and the ramones, more then make up for bands like radiohead and coldplay with room to spare

I think our generation ( i am 38) starts with the end of Cold War. That was the most significant historical event in last 50 years and tbh 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan etc can't come anywhere close to it.
Also we were lucky enough to see the beginning of "internet age" and some of us participated\developed\engineered during that time. I am pretty sure we will be remembered pretty fondly for that.

I strongly disagree with that. 1970-1990 generation wins it hands down.

+1

I'm assuming "we" here is Gen Y. Words like "disillusionment" come to mind based on what we saw growing up and what we subsequently inherited as adults.

As for the start of our era, there are a couple different ways to look at it. People here have mentioned early 1900s and 1989. These two periods basically coincided with monumental economic/technological revolutions, those being the Industrial Revolution and the Internet Revolution.

Both have shaped the way we live our lives. I would say the internet revolution is still playing itself out and may end up having a more profound effect on what historians choose to study 200 years from now.

EDIT: rethinking that last part. The impact of each is tough to quantify, both were profound...

Yeah, OP mentions 9/11, the euro, and Justin Bieber, so it's too young for Gen X and too old for Gen Z.

I'm some kind of Generation XY tweener hmm

9/11 is so outrageously overblown. Only in the United States, and really only among a certain segment of the political spectrum is it considered any kind of "turning point." Even in terms of foreign policy, the operation of the US has not changed all that considerably. I think it should rightfully be viewed as part of the same process of globalization and its conflict with nationalism/tribalism that has been going on since at least the end of the Second World War. 9/11 doesn't even come close to the scale of, say, the implosion of the Soviet Union. Of course, depending how developments in Russia continue, we may view the period from 1991 - present as merely an interim between two periods of strained relations with Russia.

Indeedio. This is quite a west-centric idea though isn't it?


In regards to all the generation x/y/x chat; i have no idea what your all on about. In the UK, i've heard none of these terms tossed about.
How do they all work?

Many Gen Yers were in diapers or not even born yet at the end of the Cold War, and those of us who were older didn't really "get it." The very oldest cusp of the generation were either 11 or 9 during the final death rattle of the Soviet Union depending on what you accept as the cutoff (I was 9).

So the question is, what historic event marked the lives of Generation Y Americans? We don't have the Kennedy Assassination or Vietnam or the fall of the Berlin Wall. We have 9/11. Maybe it wasn't such a big deal, but what else do we have?

Here in the US we have "names" for our generations. I don't know the exact ages, so I'm going to be sloppy here, but 15-year increments seem to work ok...

Born 1945-1965 "Baby Boomer." Born 1965-1980 "Generation X." Born 1980-1995 "Generation Y." Born 1995-present "Generation Z."

The baby boomers and Generation X are fairly well-accepted terms. Generation Y is plagued with names, "Echo Boom," "Millennials," and "you young whipper-snappers" among others. They can't even decide what to call us, which is apt enough. And "Gen Z" is still just coming into their own so I don't hear about them too much.

Born in 66 hope that's not too early to be part of the apathy generatiion. If it is then ... oh well.

We were an unusaually smart bunch, pronbably due to being the computer generation.

In which case i'd have to say that for us generation y'ers its 9/11 and the ensuing war on terror did really define how we grew up (at least on the international political spectrum.) The amount of press Bush gets over here is pretty radical.

There's also the recent recession, and for us over in the UK it'll be us who feel the effects of the cutbacks pretty heavily; leaving university/school etc. during a time of cutbacks. Everyone keeps calling us a "lost generation," which is pretty ballsy considering we haven't come into our own yet.

Will have to see.
I would say that the Baby Boomer's have so much to answer for; and we will at least get to shelve alot of blame for anything bad that happens to us to them.

Although the generational distinctions are interesting to discuss I put little stock in such distinctions and they may be only important in a mythological sense. I personally regard humanity as a broad based continuum, overlapping in time and space.

Examples from personal family history: My uncle Fred was born on a farm in Wisconsin a first generation immigrant from Norway and grew up speaking Norwegian and learned English at school. He farmed using animals, he fought in WW I in France; he lived through the depression, owned a bar/store in rural Wisconsin during WWII, lived into the cold war era and watched a man walk on the moon on TV.

My father was born before the depression and lived his younger years under its influence, was in WW II and was part of the occupation troops in Japan; he lived through economic expansion and the cold war; watched a man walk on the moon on TV, saw the “end” of the cold war, watched 9/11 on TV and saw the rise of the information technology era.

Then there is I, a third generation Norwegian now fully American, a baby boomer (1953) born during the economic heyday after WW II; remember the Kennedy assassination, watched a man walk on the moon on TV, lived through the turbulent 60’s and Vietnam era, Nixon resignation and all the repercussions (as did my Uncle Fred and Father), economic ups and downs, saw the “end” of the cold war, watched 9/11 on TV, currently living in the rise of the information technology era (as did my Father) and the saga continues………… Generational demarcations are not all cut and dried; are certainly not simple; and generalizations trend to muddle understanding; not enhance it.

-Zeno

This sounds pretty consistent with my experiences in the US.

I don't know, there's definitely something distinctive about being a child of the 60's or growing up in the Internet Age. People who grew up during the roaring 20s and those who grew up during the Great Depression also have significantly different life experiences.

There are trends that have some force from decade to decade. I don't believe in discrete generations, but people born in 1978 have a distinctly different sensibility from me, while people born in 1986 seem more "on my wavelength" (I was born in 1982). Movies like "Reality Bites" prove that much of what we're facing is nothing new, but that's part of the point; we're inheriting directionlessness. We don't have any meaningful backdrop to put it up against. We can't even rebel against nothing in particular any more because that's kind of a default state.

Cultural apathy for Generation X was a "statement" of some kind, I don't completely understand it. But cultural apathy for us is just a way of life. I don't think we really understand how it could be otherwise. I see things like graduating college and getting a job as more like achievements on Xbox Live than decisions that pave the way for a future identity. There's nothing stable out there to serve as an anchor, so personal identity is kind of passe.

Everything is kind of passe, especially the new ****. (I don't mean to say this is a crisis; that's how old people see it. They say we got screwed over, so I have this abstract sense that I guess things suck for us? But to me, there's nothing bad about it or remarkable about it at all. It's just how life is, that's the point of it.)

I´ve heard about the "Lost Generation". Between which years were they born?

Of course this should be taken with a barrel, not a grain of salt.

I note the distinction and it is there. So to use an analogy, all human generations can be viewed as a river, with overlapping segments, many plow through the same rapids and pools and eddies, some don’t or miss them etc., and it is true that some rapids or pools will leave a more distinctive mark on those that flow through them, but it is all part of the same river.

What I find interesting is the tendency for “generations” to self-impose distinction on themselves, and this is probably done for a variety of cultural and psychological reasons. But to do so you lose the overarching continuity that is part of the human experience. Am I light-years different than a first-century Egyptian? In some ways yes, but at a deep fundamental level of human experiences, I submit that we would be much more similar than most would think or admit, especially to themselves. To put it bluntly; I think the distinctions are more superficial than otherwise. But they are THERE, how important that is, is the question.

-Zeno