Chapter 1
The Space between Us
I didn’t know the man, but in that brief moment of mixed emotions, I couldn’t decide if I felt worse for him or his son.
Why would he tell me such a story? Was he seeking to impress me in some strange way? Or was he asking me for direction, without explicitly saying so? Had he not listened to a word of my keynote speech?
“. . . And that’s what I’m really afraid of,” he said, while nervously adjusting a large crested ring on his right hand, “that my son is going to break my record.”
With his final statement, he paused and looked at me for a response. My first thought was, He’s a full 180 degrees off-message of why it’s so important to raise up our kids to become even better than us. My second thought was accompanied by shock at his heightened anxiety over his son possibly rising to a position greater than his own. As a father, shouldn’t he be hopeful, excited, and even a bit braggish that his boy could soon outperform Dad’s standing twenty-five-year-old school record? Of all the student athletes who had played the game since this man had been in high school, the player most likely to best the state record could be his very own son. Not a stranger’s son. Not a coworker’s son. Not a relative’s son. His son. Shouldn’t this be an accomplishment worth celebrating? As a father, what could be better?
Before my mind and mouth could formulate a cordial reply, he added, “You just don’t understand how competitive our family is.”
Oh, I’m getting a pretty good idea, my brain barked. Thankfully my mouth held its tongue.
He continued, “Football is all my son and I still have in common. Once he beats me at the one thing I did really well, I’ll have nothing more to teach him. You know, you’re right about how everything is changing fast. I can’t help him much with his homework anymore because I don’t understand it. I can’t keep up with how he uses technology, and cars . . . well, forget it. They have become so complicated, there’s no teaching him how to turn a wrench to fix his car in the garage. The one and only thing we have in common is football. And it looks like I’ll soon be left behind there too.”
It turned out he had been listening during my presentation. In fact, he related very personally with my message about the widening gap between today’s pre- and postmillennium generations. What he was trying so awkwardly to say is that he feared an impending separation from his son. He was standing on the edge of a divide between the two of them, and he had no idea how to close the distance. With fewer and fewer shared experiences, they lacked ways to relate with each other, and this was hurting them both.
In reality, he didn’t care about losing his coveted football record. He feared losing the opportunity to teach his son anything new. From his perspective, all that held the two of them together was this one last remaining father/son connection. Football. Once that was gone, there would be nothing left for which his son could look up to him. He’d have nothing more to teach his son.
In recent years, I’ve noted a sharp increase in similar conversations I’ve had with parents, educators, and community and faith leaders. Each are asking their own version of the same two questions. First, “How do we close the gap between the generations so we can stay connected and relevant to each other?” And second, “What can we teach today’s emerging generations to ensure they will one day do and be even better than us?”
Whereas the majority of this book focuses on addressing the second of these two questions, it’s best we first briefly attend to the question of closing the gap between the generations.
Moore’s Law
Question: How do we close the gap between the generations so we can stay connected and relevant to each other?
This is a great question. And like most people, I really enjoy great questions. After all, when you ask a great question, you should expect a great answer. Unfortunately, great or not, most people don’t like my answer. At least not at first.
Answer: There is no closing the gap. Moore’s Law does not allow it.
If you are thinking this sounds odd, you are not alone. After all, who’s ever heard of a law that places limitations on how we connect with and stay relevant between the generations?
Now before we start investigating statutes and drafting propositions to overturn this divisive regulation, it’s important to understand that Moore’s Law is not a legal precedent. Instead, Moore’s Law is a tech-industry observation and prediction made by a computer engineer back in 1965. Perhaps Moore’s Law would be better described as Moore’s Observation, although I don’t believe a title change would make us feel any better, because in the end, the results remain the same.
To help us better understand Moore’s Law, here is what the observation is and does, and why it has unintentionally created a gap between the generations.
Moore’s Law was named after Gordon Moore, the cofounder of Intel—one of the world’s largest microprocessor chip manufacturers. A few years before Moore and his business partner, Robert Noyce, launched NM Electronics (which later became the Intel Corporation), Moore worked at Fairchild Semiconductor as the director of research and development. In 1965 Moore was approached by Electronics Magazine and given the assignment to predict what was going to happen in the growing semiconductor industry over the next ten years.
Take a moment to think about what Electronics Magazine was asking Moore to do. At that time in the mid-twentieth century, the top ten Fortune 500 corporations in America included automotive, oil and gas, and manufacturing companies.1 America’s tech industry was still a fledgling trade. Yet many people believed computers were destined to become an integral part of our everyday lives. Little did they know just how right they were.
Moore knew he had been asked a great question. To formulate his answer, he paused and looked back at advancements in the semiconductor industry up to that point in 1965. Moore noticed that the number of components in a dense integrated circuit doubled approximately every year, resulting in smaller and faster semiconductors. At the same time, the relative manufacturing cost per component was decreasing. Basically, more components in smaller spaces for less money.
Moore then turned his attention on the years to come. With insight based on hindsight, he predicted that this level of innovation and miniaturization would continue for at least the next ten years. His conclusion forecast computers becoming powerful enough and affordable enough that the average person would soon experience new and improved technological advancement seamlessly integrated into their everyday life. In the subsequent article titled “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits” that Moore wrote for the thirty-fifth-anniversary issue of Electronics Magazine, he stated, “Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers—or at least terminals connected to a central computer—automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment.”2
It was as if Moore looked into a crystal ball in 1965 and saw a clear vision of . . . us, today.
You may be thinking, Wait a minute. Components per integrated circuit? What do computer components have to do with our relationships, personal connectivity, and the growing gap between the cultural norms of parents and children, teachers and students, bosses and employees?
For me to explain the effect Moore’s Law has had on us personally, I’ll need to tell you a short personal story. To set the scene, return with me to college and one very memorable lunch-and-learn.
While studying sociology at Seattle Pacific University in the late 1990s, I had an unusual and exceptional professor. He was younger than most of the university’s faculty, lived on an island, commuted to campus via ferry, rode a motorcycle, and was somewhat of a sushi connoisseur. His class lecture style was unconventional for the time, as he approached teaching as more of a guide-from-the-side than a sage-from-the-stage. Class time flew by and often concluded with groans from students wishing the discussion could continue. To accommodate both our hunger for learning and need for a noontime meal, our professor often extended a lunch invitation to anyone available. After a short walk across campus, class would unofficially resume in a small restaurant that served really good sushi. Looking back, I believe we probably spent an equal amount of time discussing the development, structure, and functions of human society while mastering the art of eating with chopsticks as we did while taking notes during scheduled class hours.
A New Norm
This brings us to Moore’s Law. During one particularly long, raw-fish-fueled lunch-and-learn, I got to sketching on the back of a napkin a hypothesis that brought together our current course studies on generational norms with Gordon Moore’s predictions about technology.
One of the sketches included bell-shaped curves representing the standard distribution of cultural norms in generations past and curves theorizing how future generations would arrange them. At the time, the accepted intervals between generations was twenty to twenty-five years, so by measuring distance between the peaks of each generation’s cultural norm, we could get a picture of how far the norm had advanced between consecutive generations. Comparing the distances between cultural norms of the Silent Generation, Boomers, and Gen X, the norm progression appeared even and relatively predictable. But when we factored in the cause-and-effect of computing power exponentially increasing while simultaneously decreasing in relative size and cost, aka Moore’s Law, a new cultural norm pattern emerged for the age groups following Generation X.
Between bites of seaweed-rolled rice and raw fish, we crunched some numbers, sketched, and did some predicting of our own about how the next generations would interact with information, entertainment, employment, social engagements, and more in ways that we believed would be much different than the experiences of their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. The resulting sketch on the back of a trifolded paper napkin charted a widening of the gap between the cultural norms of Gen X and the those we now know as Millennials, Gen Z, and their following generations.
Keep in mind the lunch took place just prior to Y2K. Remember back that far? Before the twenty-first century. Wearing a seat belt was optional, smoking in restaurants was allowed nearly everywhere, and airports allowed anyone to walk all the way out to the gate. America had been online for only a few years, and those who had email accessed it through slow, costly, screeching dial-up connections. At that time, the best cell phones flipped, text messaging “fever” was still in its infancy,3 and per-text rates applied.
Compare what we experienced then to what many consider to be totally normal today. Safety belt laws have been enacted nationwide and indoor smoking is mostly a thing of the past, especially in restaurants. Only ticketed passengers are allowed into airport concourses through security checkpoints equipped with scanners and advanced body-imaging technology that can make the most innocent person sweat in fear of being selected for a random screening. And then there are our cell phones. Perhaps it would be better to describe them as pocket-sized computers equipped with social media, gaming, maps, messaging, reading, camera, calendar, web browsing, shopping, and more with every upgrade. Oh, and if really needed, they still make calls.
There! Did you feel that? The sense of pause and awe through comparison? Can you see the distance technology has taken us since we were young? We’ve come so far, so fast, with so much change. You just became aware of the measurable influence Moore’s Law has had on our culture. By citing Moore’s Law—yet not by any fault of that law—we can measure with precision the abnormally wide gap between the cultural norms of twentieth-century generations and their early-twenty-first-century children.
CONSIDER THIS:
Gen Z is less likely to work “traditional” teen jobs. Instead, 70 percent consider themselves self-employed, earning money from a “side hustle” and tech-powered gig jobs.4
YOUR TURN:
- Compare your experience as a young person with the experiences of young people today. In what ways has technology changed the everyday experiences of twenty-first-century generations?
When I was their age . . . Young people today . . . __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ - How have the differences you observe between the generations affected the way you interact with young people?
Negatively __________
Positively __________ - What is the most significant experience you had as a young person that you believe today’s emerging generations will also benefit from experiencing?