Societal mood shifts and moves over time and in (obvious later) eras. Generations, and which one is in young adulthood, midlife or elderhood impact these shifts everywhere, including technology.
Here’s a look at generational archetypes and technology. Mind you: generations (at least those in the U.S.) encompass tens of millions of people, span 17-23 years and are made up of zillions of individuals, each with their own leanings.
… AND, generations have collective peer personalities — that’s much of what makes them generations. OK, here goes. Remember: we’re talking big, large, societal moods and cycles here — not you, personally, or your mom, or whatever. Social trends. Directions.
These are the generational archetypes, the order in which they appear and their general relationship to technology.
Boomers – Reject and snub
Boomers (1943-1960), the Prophet archetype, reject and snub technology.
I know, I know, I know. You’re gonna say, “But Steve Jobs was a Boomer” or “But my Boomer mom has worked in IT all her life.” We’re talking large-scale societal trends, here. Not your mom, per se.
Prophet archetypes are inner-focused. Values, vision, meaning. Mega-technology is the realm of their parents’ generation, and they are the ultimate “stick it to the man” generation, in which “man” to them, subconsciously means “daddy,” and they have an Oedipal relationship to the Father and a desire to crush and destroy the world they created.
Xers – Explode and exploit
GenXers (1961-1981), the Nomad archetype, are the ultimate technology creators and users. They’re the natural-born entrepreneurs, the generation always looking for an angle, a market, a missed chance someone else didn’t see. Xers/Nomads, knowing the societal nets for other generations don’t apply to them, move toward markets and money as their net. They are the ones that take or make technology and ramp it up for market advantage.
Nomads don’t necessarily make all the technologies they use, but they are the ones who figure out how to make money with it. E.g. Boomers saw the web as a place to share ideas. Xers were like, yeah, I can use that tech to my advantage and make a buck.
Today’s Xers are the creators of The World That Functions, vis-a-vis technology that is. As an early-wave Xer, Ima tell you: stuff didn’t work before the way it works now. At all. Thank your Xers for the profound (profound, profound, profound!) levels of market and lifestyle convenience you experience today. Google, ebay, paypal, airbnb, dell … to name a few.
Millennials – Size and scale
Millennials (1982-2005), the Hero archetype, are all about outer-world improvements, public structures and massive scale. These are the creators of the explosion of post-WWII communities of same-same houses (a technological marvel and massive generational uplifting of the times!).
Hero generations take on, collectively, only a handful of large, mega projects (recently with the Greatest/G.I. generation — the nuclear bomb, the US highway system, a man on the moon, vaccines, the Green Revolution). They are a grow-grow, big-big, scale-scale, public- and outer-world-focused generation. Everything scales up during their midlife years. (Stay tuned.)
The Next One – Tinker, refine and improve
Silents (1925-1942) & The Not-Yet-Recognized-or-Named Generation (the latter born 2006 to probably 2028) arrive after the juggernaut, mechanistic-thinking, not-very-reflective Millennial/Hero generation. Their role is to refine and improve the technology so the massive, mega structures, systems and organizations the Millennials/Heroes (will) create in midlife (mid-40s to mid-60s, when a generation is in the height of its power). Without these tinkerers tinkering, many of the huge projects of mid-life Millennials would fall flat, fail and possibly harm others.
This generation of tinkerers tends to create a lot of new inventions, though they are the opposite of their Nomad/Xer-like parents in that they have very little entrepreneurial drive, and they often don’t make much off their inventions
