The Old, the New, One’s Right, but Whom? : A Generational Difference in View

"Students…have to fundamentally reorient what they are learning" (Friedman 278). As I limped through reading The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, I could barely stop myself from yanking out all of my hair when I saw that author Thomas Friedman had no clue how kids are already learning. I agreed with what Friedman points out next, "Educators [have to reorient] how they are teaching it" (278). Teachers do need to adjust their teaching style "in order to take advantage of the flat-world platform" (278), but how can he not see that most of the children of America, even most of the English speaking kids around the world, are already at that new point? They are likely more aware now of the changes in the ways of the world than he may ever be and the kids don’t even know there are others who don’t relate to the "flat world" (76) to the extent these students do. As Friedman talked about all the changes today’s youth must make, I questioned, just to myself, how can they change from something they never were?

I realized as I continued my reading that the reason I could not get on tippy-toes and see eye to eye with him on this subject of the future was because of a gigantic generational divider of the type that cannot be breached. Like a node in an atom, the divide cannot disappear. We two electrons in the atom of the flat future can never be in the same orbital of views. Every generation is going to have its own opinion on what the changes in technology will do to the future.

The discovery of this wall was a bit of a shock to my system. I have always been able to communicate better and with more ease when talking to people older than myself than when speaking with a peer. I have also felt like I am not anywhere near up to speed when it comes to technology. I still feel that even many middle schoolers are much more computer savvy then I am. Why then do I see more clearly that changes have already occurred in the way students learn? It may be because I have seen it happen all around me as I watch, unable to participate. I have experienced the shift by way of observation, staying still while my classmates skate by. I remember the feelings of uselessness, stuck as if in a coma as the rest of the class was able to leap to the challenges almost instantaneously.

Friedman did not see his classmates discover the wonders of the computer far more quickly than he since he had already been out of school for many years when computers such as the ones we have now came around. He even admits, "This flattening had been taking place while I was sleeping, and I had missed it" (8). What he does not seem to see is that just because he was asleep for this shift doesn’t mean the kids were. In fact, quite the contrary, they were more awake than anyone realizes, including them. They were so awake that outsourcing is not going to have the same negative effects it did on the baby boomers or the people born in generation x. They were asleep in the same way Friedman was.

But these aren’t the only ages in the world, my age, my parents and Friedman. There are many others out there. How do they think technology will change in the future?

I volunteer with a square dance group that goes into nursing homes to perform once a month. Last Saturday, the twenty-fourth of February, was one of these shows. I went around as I socialized with the residents and asked a few what they thought about technology for the future. I wanted to be very complete in age range and I figured you can’t get much older than that. All the residents I interviewed agree that the biggest challenge generation z will need to endure is the ability and drive to work hard, both in school and in career. That is the same challenge they needed to overcome in their youth. "You had to work hard, and try hard [when I was younger]. Do your homework… For your generation you’ll probably have to work that much harder," theorized one resident who recently celebrated her eighty-ninth birthday. Another thought technology would actually make it too easy to get a job because her grandson had just found a job online. For the obvious reason of being shut off from the world, they had no clue what was happening on a larger scale.

Most of the performers in this particular square dance group are getting along in age as well. The majority of these dancers are barely younger than some of the residents. In fact, one is a resident, but not one I interviewed. However, I asked a few of these dancers some questions and got answers very close to Friedman’s views.

When I inquired about some of the challenges the young generation would encounter, Marcus Hasknis, who is probably in his late sixties, rushed to the answer; "This has been a concern of mine. In the US, most technology jobs are going overseas." Marcus lost his job in 1999 when the cast of chips fell and the outsourcing was just beginning. He experienced something himself so he worries it will affect other generations in the same detrimental ways it affected him. His wife Dorothy agreed with his hypothesis, as did another friend of mine Bud Davis, who happens to be right around Thomas Friedman’s age. I sense some continuity beginning to reveal itself.

If we continue down the age line, we come to the baby boomers followed quickly by those from generation x. My parents are both baby boomers and yet their views are slightly different views. My mother and father, Ruth and Scott Riegelhaupt-Herzig both remember the car manufacturing industry moving over seas, but their reactions were a little bit different.

My mom, who was at the University of Michigan when much of car manufacturing moved to Japan, told me that everyone panicked, much the same way they are now.. People thought Americans would lose all their jobs forever, but what then happened a little while down the line? Japan started getting parts from the US. They took the jobs when they moved the assembly lines overseas, but then they turned around and made new American jobs which essentially made up for the jobs they shipped off to Japan in the first place.

According to my mom, who, I must say, is very good at seeing the whole picture, the same thing will happen with the technology jobs. Sure there will be a problem temporarily, but by the time generation z comes up to bat, that phase will be over and things will have long since stabilized.

When she pointed this out, it made perfect sense to me. Her words triggered an insight within me. This was exactly the feeling I had while I was reading The World is Flat, but I could never put it in words quite right. Now I can, thanks to Ruth.

My dad, who is a Technical Support Manager and has seen several of his jobs go overseas, still saw the outsourcing as an issue, though he too did not seem to think the world was going to end because of shipping jobs overseas. He just thought we would need to make another shift, just as we, as a nation, had done when car manufacturing was sent off to Japan. "Jobs are going to move, which means new ones will have to be created, or people will have to have to pursue those jobs outside of this country…But it’s always been like that it’s just that different industries are moving now," my dad explained when I interviewed him.

Skipping right along to generation y, the perspective is very different from my mother’s view and even farther from the words my dad shared with me. I found one blog that was incredibly useful for flipping everything around in terms of preparing for the future.
On her blog, a New Zealand woman named Simone wrote an entry simply called "Generation Y" about a conference she had attended on the topic of "the intergenerational working styles of the emerging work force" (Simone Generation Y). In her blog, she highlights some things she found interesting in the conference she attended. What I found intriguing about her entry, was how completely opposite it was to what we have been reading. We are sitting here, worrying about what types of bad things might be happening due to globalization, especially to generation y and younger generations, but Simone is somewhere else, talking about how companies are finding people from generation y to be a huge asset to the business. "What fascinated more was the interest in our generation: how can we keep them? retain them? develop them? recruit them? We are the workforce of tomorrow and companies increasingly try to find the way of attracting us. We have attributes the companies are looking for, although some of their companies do not have attributes we are looking for. An interesting game," recalls Simone, adding some of her opinions.

The differences could just be because she lives in New Zealand and not the US, but I do not think that is the cause for this change. I think that I have just found the great wall of views. Somewhere in the baby boomers, maybe with some overlap into generation x, there is the barrier that prevents the generations from seeing eye-to-eye. This guess of mine was validated, to me, when I realized that my dad was the youngest person to think that outsourcing would be a permanent problem for American kids.

Another woman from generation y, closer to the young end, named Mary Elaine Akers-Bell, yes, the one who sits in the middle of the second row, gave me her two cents on the matter. "I do not think outsourcing is a big problem, nor that it will become a problem. America just gets some more competition, which it needs. Competition drives and innovation, and we're the innovation nation. It’ll be good for us," she explained in an email and instant message interview. "I have a feeling by the time the little kids come up to bat, all the fear will have melted away. They'll have new fears, but outsourcing, (to me) seems to be a fear of the elderly and the past." The "elderly and the past," that same generation divide.

I fit into the age group that no one can agree which "generation" we are in. Some say I also am in generation y. Others bump me to generation z, which is very similar to generation millennial. (Then, of course, there is Friedman who decided generation z started in about 1980.) You can choose your favorite, but the name does not affect the unique point of view teens of today hold when it comes to technology in the future.

Teens have a truly unique way of looking at technology because their imaginations are still going almost as strong as a child’s imagination, but at the same time, they are starting to become serious about their futures. For example, when I asked my friend Molly what type of technology advances would be a challenge for the future, outsourcing did not even cross her mind. She answered that maybe someone you want to work for will Google you and find something you didn’t want that person to know. Those revelations could cost you the job of your dreams. But who other than a teenager would think of that as the first concern?

Up next are the undisputed gen z kids. I was unable to get a coherent interview out of a pre-teen or younger, but I found a site that told me what I needed to know.
http://www.youtube.com/YTASK is a YouTube channel starring young video bloggers from around the world. YTASK stands for You Tube All Star Kids and is all about connecting the world by forming bonds between video bloggers at a young age. The whole point is to flatten the lives of the new generation before they really know life to be any other way. There are subscribers to YTASK from all corners of the globe.

On YTASK’s homepage, there is a short video with the channel’s mission statement. In this introduction video, one pair of twins describes YTASK by declaring, "It’s about collaborating across the world." Another explains, "It’s about collaborations. It’s about friends. It’s about you." All this coming from kids about nine years old. Now I ask you, does this sound like the next generation is worried about the flattening of the world? To me it appears that the ability to communicate with other kids around the planet is an exciting and positive thing to them.

I personally have to say I’m with the kids on this one. Having a friend half the world away, I find computer communication tools to be essential in keeping our friendship alive. I don’t think coming generations will need to worry about the effects of outsourcing not because outsourcing will stop or even slow but because the kids of today are growing up with this easy multinational communication. They do not need to alter what they are doing now in order to compete with these "new" players on the field because they already know there are foreign people waiting to take the next high paying job that comes around. In the present, kids are already competing with those from other countries. In some ways they are already even competing with older generations in a way that would be unacceptable in other media.

In that respect, there is definitely an over lap in between Friedman’s views of a "more about connecting and collaborating horizontally" (Friedman 208). In The World is Flat, he describes the changes in the corporate world as a shift from vertical command to horizontal collaboration. The youth of today have already felt that shift without even knowing what was happening in business. From personal experience, I know that kids don’t care what is going on in the corporations. They don’t care how a product is getting to them as long as they get what they wanted. Whether a team worked together to bring them YouTube or if one person bosses around some lower level workers to get the product makes no difference to kids. Instead of contemplating the command chain of YouTube, they would rather be on YouTube uploading videos and watching other people’s videos. Isn’t that the point of YouTube? The freedom of video communication and not wondering how you got the freedom? If the world still had a vertical chain of command, video blogger Sam Wilkinson (a.k.a. wilkojunior86 on YouTube) would never have been able to get away with publicly putting an elder on his "who’s that idiot on YouTube?" section. What is obvious to me is that we have begun to "horizontalize" (209) by the fact that not only did Sam insult an adult on his "Random Report # 2," but also his report has gotten nearly 9,500 views in the past 6 months.

Friedman has definitely noticed the changes in the technology, but he does not accurately assess the reaction of different ages to the same events. He does not factor in the fact that perhaps not all generations were asleep when the world became flat. Significantly less than half of the world’s population was asleep. Friedman is just stuck in his orbital and he can’t get past that node to see what is really happening to the kids of the world.