David Houle - The Shift Age Generations (Entering the Shift Age, eBook 4)

The Shift Age is a time of great generational transfer of power, influence, and authority. It is perhaps the greatest generational transfer at the greatest speed in human history.

Looking at history and looking at the world through the lens of generations can, just as with any lens or filter, be limiting in its scope. Generalities prevail, values are assigned, and tens of millions of people are grouped together despite the full spectrum of individuality and uniqueness that we represent. That said, viewing the world through the lens of generations is helpful in assessing where we have been and where the changes in the world will trend. And there are two distinct generations that are and will be in ascendency in the Shift Age: the Millennials and the Digital Natives. Understanding these generations is crucial to succeeding in the Shift Age.

Loosely defined, the Millennials are people who, as of 2012, are in their twenties and have come of age in this new millennium. There are two loose subsets of this group, as we will discuss shortly.

The Digital Natives are those young people who, as of 2012, are 15 and younger. The name Digital Natives is due to the reality that they are the first generation born into the new digital landscape.

As you can see, were defining these generations in relation to their experience with the digital world. The Millennials were largely introduced as adolescents. Digital Natives entered the digital landscape as children. Everyone else is what I refer to as a digital immigrant.

Anyone reading these words over the age of thirty in 2012 is unquestionably a digital immigrant. These adults have been introduced to the latest technology, devices, apps, and social media as adults. Digital immigrants are largely comprised of the Baby Boomers and Generation X.

Baby Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964. If you accept the approximate start of the Information Age to be in the mid-1970s, then the Baby Boomers were the first generation in history whose lifespan has been touched by three ages. They were born in the Industrial Age, spent most of their adult lives in the Information Age, and they have now entered the Shift Age.

Prior to the Information Age, there never really was a generation that was not contained by a single age, which is why the Boomers are so unique.

That is why, for years, I have called them the Bridge Generationthey bridge, particularly in the developed countries of the world, the end of the Industrial Age into the beginning of the Shift Age. In all areas of society, they are the bridge to the second half of the twentieth century. They also therefore hold the greatest amount of legacy thinking which, as discussed in Part Three, is now falling away at an almost incomprehensible rate.

Of course, the problem with Boomers having so much legacy thought is that it has always been about them. They have been the pig in the python in terms of shaping social thought. That is why, as you must have experienced if you are a Boomer or a Millennial, the workplace has become a battleground between these two generations. Boomers think about how they came up or became successful and dont realize how different the Millennials are. The Millennials, in addition to feeling misunderstood, hold resentment for the conditions created by the Boomers. For example, the Millennials had nothing to do with the global reorganizational recession of 20072010. It was largely a Baby Boomer collapse. A college graduate with a fresh diploma from the classes of 20082010 graduates into the worst economic mess in seventy-five years and sees it as the doing of the Baby Boom Generation.

Generation X is sandwiched between the Boomers and the Millennials. In the workplace, they spend much of their time translating the Millennials to the Boomers and trying to get the Millennials to not completely dismiss all Boomer thinking as out of date.

Gen X is the generation the spotlight missed.

One of the Gen X experiences, however, is that, in 2012 and for the next decade, they will be the largest group of parents of K12 students, all of whom are Digital Natives.

This gives Gen X a personal insight into this incredible new developing consciousness and rewiring of the brain that the Digital Natives represent.

The Millennial Generation

Volumes have been written and numerous research studies have been done about the Millennial Generation, and various timeframes have been given for their earliest and latest birth years. Once more, it must be said that specifically defining any generation must be done with some license of categorization that is not neat and specific but general, indicative, and directional. Things bleed both ways before and after arbitrary dates, but writing and speaking about generations is always somewhat arbitrary. With that said, I see the Millennial Generation as those largely born between 1981 and 1997 (that means that as of this writing, in 2012, they are 15 to 31 years old), those who grew up with the digital world but were not born into it.