History can help further set our understanding of the generation gap. Examining the norms of the Silent Generation, Boomers, and Gen X, we observe that progression of the cultural norms was slow enough to allow people of all ages to share, influence, and pass on many of their life experiences. What was new and innovative for one generation became the norm of their children’s generation. For example, let’s examine what multiple twentieth-century generations experienced as normal compared to the practices of Gen Z. To conduct this comparison we’ll consider the cultural norm of something very familiar to us all: the telephone.
What’s important to note is how each of the above generations shared experiences in the gradual advancement of what each considered “normal” phone use. The “new” telephone innovation experienced by a limited number of people in one generation becomes the “normal” phone used by most members of the next generation. What is normal for that generation becomes “old” technology for the next. Still, all three generations shared experiences relevant to the technological innovation and advancement of phones.
Then it happened. Moore’s Law reached a tipping point. Integrated circuits functioned fast enough, were built small enough, and got cheap enough that in the measure of a single generation, the cultural norm shifted so far, so quickly, that the shared telecom experiences of three generations became obsolete to members of the newest postmillennium generation. The gap that separates the twentieth- from twenty-first-century phone use eliminates grandparents and parents from sharing in the evolution of the phone experiences of most Millennials and Generation Z. Consider this: postmillennium generations are the first with limited or no experience in using a landline phone. Some haven’t ever seen and don’t know how to dial a rotary phone. Most have never dialed “0” to speak to a live switchboard operator. Instead, what they consider a normal phone experience includes cellular devices that go anywhere, offer unlimited messaging and data plans, and stream 24/7 connectivity to videos, music, and the internet.
Back to my after-class sushi with a cool professor. As unscientific as sketches on soy-sauce-stained napkins appear, it turns out our hypothesis was accurate. Moore’s Law did indeed have a significant effect on the progression of generational norms. The norms between twentieth- and twenty-first-century generations have undeniably held fewer shared experiences. And we’re not just talking about phones. The same gap can be measured when examining intergenerational experiences in transportation, education, health care, nutrition, housing, entertainment, and the list goes on.
After phones, here is one of my other favorite (and simple) examples of the drastic shift in generational norms: breakfast cereal. In 1970 larger grocery stores throughout the United States offered an average of 160 varieties of breakfast cereals to shoppers. By 1998 that number had doubled to 340 distinct options. With the emergence of new technologies that allowed for production customization and mass marketing, the number of breakfast cereal variations grocery stores could offer shoppers leapt to 4,945 by 2012.2 That’s a lot of morning meal options to drown in milk. Speaking of milk, in 1970 there was a total of four types. By 1998 shoppers could pick from nineteen variations. Jump to 2012 and consumers had more than fifty milk options to go with their 4,945 variations of breakfast cereal.
Think on this mind-bending fact for a long minute. More new technology has been introduced into the world in the last twenty years than compiled in all history prior. That’s a lot to assimilate in two short decades. Good thing we don’t have to be experts on all that new stuff. Yes, but today’s youth are! They are the first generation to be “subject matter experts” before their adult parents on topics of technology. The order of information succession used to be that adults taught the youth about the most significant aspects of life. From life skills to sex education, it was the older who shared rites-of-passage information with the younger. Today, adult supervision is no longer required to learn about almost anything from about anyone. Moore’s Law has resulted in excess access to all topics of information, gathered from around the world and placed into the palms of our hands. In general, young people know more about the technology used to access this information than adults do. The adults take a back seat while the youth teach us how to drive digitally.
That’s one aspect of the influence Moore’s Law has had on different generations. With increased computing performance comes new technologies. With new technologies come new and altered experiences. The result is that shared experiences between generations become fewer and fewer. The gap between generational norms widens, and we begin to find it difficult to relate to what others experienced as “normal” when they were growing up. Thus, stories grandparents and parents tell their kids that start with, “When I was your age . . .” are heard as historic first and relevant maybe.
CONSIDER THIS:
Today’s smartphone is millions of times more powerful than all of the combined computing power that guided NASA’s Apollo 11 to the moon and back in 1969.3