Technology Through a Generational Lens

We can see the future of technology by looking at the progression of generations and their use of it.

Each generation is shaped by the technology in ascendancy of their youth.

The Great Generation grew up on Newspapers and Radio and well into adulthood these were the two chosen media technologies they chose by default

The Silent Generation continued the media habits of the Great Generation and was the first to buy television sets, but they came to the medium as adults.

The Boomer Generation was the first generation to grow up with TV. First black and white with limited programming to color and an expanded broadcast day. TV was formative to Boomers from 1950s and 1960s childhood through the middle age when cable TV exploded. The TV generation.

Gen X was the cable TV generation. They were teenagers during the heyday of MTV and by early adulthood were computer literate.

The Millennial Generation was the first one to have computers and cell phones in their teenage years. They were cellular and computer literate but did not grow up with the Internet, they came to it.

The Digital Native Generation is the first generation to grow up with a connected childhood. They were the first to grow up in the Shift Age reality of there being two realities, the physical reality and the screen reality. Therefore, they were the first teenagers that had to be “popular” in both places. The first fully social media generation. Every other generation came to it as adults.

It is too soon to place Generation Alpha except to say they will be a more digitally immersed generation than the Digital Natives. They may well be the AI generation as they will have much of their childhood and all of their adult lives living in an AI world.

We see how different generations use technologies. Only the Silent and some of the Boomer generations type texts on a phone using their dominant hand index finger, replicating the two-index finger hunt and peck typing by those who never learned to type. Many Boomers, most Millennials and all Digital Natives use their thumbs, finally elevating the ‘thumbs in opposition’ evolutionary step up from apes. One does not see a teenager using their index finger for typing on a phone. Nor does one see many Digital Natives using the phone for talking; it is usually for texting.

[Note: we all still call it a phone, as it came into being during the Boomer years when it was called a cell or mobile phone as opposed to the installed base of landline phones. Even now, Digital Natives refer to it as a phone or smartphone, even though they may use the handheld computer only 5-10% of the time for making phone calls.]

There are two axioms for technology that are relevant here:

1. every major new technology always disrupts the existing reality, and

2. all technology is morally neutral, how humans use it determines whether it is good or bad

Relative to #1, the TV disrupted the media landscape. It changed the American Family and was negatively called “the boob tube”. Boomers were told they could only ‘watch one hour a day and after your homework is done’. Similarly, the Boomers as parents told their children that they had to ‘limit your screen time’. So each new generation has a new technology that the prior generations have a problem with as the existing reality changed.

The primary screen growing up for the Boomers – the only screen – was TV

The primary screens for GenXers were the TV and the computer

The primary screens for Millennials were the TV, the computer and the smartphone, the latter two being interactive

The primary screens for the Digital Natives growing up were the smartphone, the computer, and the TV. Due to accelerating bandwidth, the Digital Natives are the first generation to have everything be mobile, and interactive.

So we have moved from newspapers, radio and TV which were all one- way communications technologies to handheld devices that are fully mobile and interactive in three generations

[NOTE: Regular readers of this newsletter know that one of my visions for the future is the next step of human evolution that will start to happen in the next few decades and will be well underway by the end of the century. We are moving to an Evolutionshift which will be the merger of humanity and technological intelligence. One of the ways I see this is the approach of how the generations alive today are progressing toward this Evolutionshift]

If one looks at the acceptance and usage of new technologies through the generations,

Great -> Silent ->Boomer -> GenX -> Millennial -> Digital Native - > Alpha

One sees that the last two generations are consuming all forms of technology that all the prior ones experienced as new. The direction from the sitting in the living room to being able to connect literally at arm’s length anywhere in the world is directionally clear.

The Speed of Technological Acceptance

Time for Technologies to reach 50 million users

Telephone 75 years

Radio 38 years

Computers 14 years

TV 13 years

The Internet 4 years

Chat/GPT 1 month

So, the speed of technological acceptance is increasing. This means that the younger generations alive today will have a number of technological inventions and innovations in their lifetimes.

I think the generation after Alpha will be the Nexus Generation as they will be the first generation to be born into a world of Technological Intelligence. The Nexus Generation will be taught by TI in school and will more fully intuit the possibilities of TI than current generations.

Lastly, given the life expectancy of Americans today is 80 years, that means that a majority of Digital Natives and Alpha Generation will be alive in 2100. The vast majority of the coming Nexus Generation – the first one born into and comfortable with TI in all aspects of their lives – will live through the end of the century and, may in fact be the first generation to be part of the coming Evolutionshift.

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