The generation gap is obvious enough. For my parents’ generation, color television may have still been relatively new and the channel selection was certainly more limited. For my parents, it was a struggle to make a new life for themselves in Canada, whereas I’m firmly established and ensconced as a Canadian. When Adalynn showed up last month, it got me thinking that I’d be reliving some form of my own childhood all over again.
Except, this time, it would be completely different.
Digital Is Everywhere
When I was a kid, music was distributed largely on cassette tapes (though our home did have a record player and an 8-track stereo). For Adalynn, I feel like the concept of physical media will become increasingly foreign to her. Why would you buy a physical CD when you can stream a song through Spotify? Why would you buy a Blu-ray disc when you can watch it on Netflix? Why would you kill a tree for a paperback book when the Kindle e-book is right there.
Just about everything has gone digital. A friend of mine posted a Throwback Thursday photo of his trip to Europe just ten years ago and it’s clear he scanned a print he got from a roll of film. How did I know? It had the characteristic amber date stamp on the lower corner. Adalynn will never deal with film cameras or card catalogs at the library. It’s all digital.
Saving Pennies Makes No Cents
A penny certainly didn’t go very far during my childhood, as the cheapest piece of candy I could get from the corner store still cost five cents. For Adalynn, the penny is practically non-existent. As far as Canadian currency is concerned, the penny won’t really exist for her at all. It’ll exist as little more than a theoretical concept.
The Expectation of Instant Gratification
It would be unfair and inaccurate to describe me as a particularly patient person. However, the circumstances of my childhood were such that I had no choice but to wait for certain things. If I wanted to watch my favorite Saturday morning cartoons, by golly I had to wait until Saturday morning to do it. If I wanted the latest video game, I would have to take the time to make my way to a physical store, get the cartridge, and make my way back home.
The pace of Adalynn’s childhood, for better or for worse, is going to be inherently faster. If there’s a particular video she wants to watch, YouTube and other video services are literally there on demand. If she does indeed become a gamer, she can download new titles almost immediately through Xbox Live, Steam or whatever other service. Of course, the onus then falls on us as parents to teach the little one to wait… and I’m not sure I have the patience for that.
The Personal Is Public
As I’ve said so many times before and as I will continue to say many more times in the future, the Internet has been a wonderfully empowering vehicle. It has lowered the barrier to entry for the masses, allowing anyone to be heard and seen by everyone else. And therein lies a very sharp double-edged sword.
Even if you are not actively sharing content about yourself, as would be the case with Adalynn’s blog, other people can and will share information about you in a far more rapid manner than ever before. Everyone will know a lot more about Adalynn’s childhood than they would have known about my childhood.
A More Open Society
While Vancouver’s Chinese population was indeed sizable during my childhood (and it continues to be very large), I was still a victim of racism on multiple occasions. This kind of prejudice has not died–not by a long shot–but it has dramatically subsided. Yes, there is still a fight for equal rights for women. Yes, there is still a fight for racial equality. Yes, there is still a fight for the rights of the LGBT community.
But you know what? It’s getting better every day and kids of Adalynn’s generation will hopefully see the world and its diversity of people in a completely different way. And she’ll have far greater access to a variety of ethnic cuisines than I ever did too. If this video of kids reacting to the “controversial” Cheerios commercial is any indication, I think we’re in a good hands.
Yes, she lives in a technology world and will be more aware of things because of that. The one thing to remember though is that being her father you can control a slower pace. You can make her wait for that xBox video, you can go to the store or mall, go to the park and hang out. One of the cool things to do is to teach them that patience, while not your forte is still a valuable thing to understand.
I’ve been reading about successful leaders lately and have seen a commonality. Everything is in clear control, or in other words their patience leads them to not make rushed, quick decisions. They slow it down, think it out.
I believe that is something we both need to teach our children and ourselves. Besides the time we take away from the technology makes fr more personal time with them.
This reminds me of the marshmallow experiment at Stanford. Children who displayed the ability to delay gratification went to be more successful, on average, than those who couldn’t.
When my parents were born, Australia still didn’t use decimal currency. That switch was made in ’66.
It was only a few years before I was born, in ’92, that we got rid of our one- and two-cent coins.
It was only half a decade before my birth that the first Australian universities had a sustained connection to ARPANet. Today, I could be writing this message to you in Canada on a device that fits in my pocket, from the middle of a field.
It makes me wonder. What will the world be like when Adalynn is grown up? What sort of a world will her children (should she have any) grow up in?
Neural implants are inevitable.
So, Canada is till a white-dominated world that does not offer equal rights to people like minorities?
While I don’t have the exact figures–I’m sure you could look them up–Canada is still predominantly Caucasian. The majority of politicians and business leaders are Caucasian too, though that isn’t to say that visible minorities don’t get *some* representation. On an official level, “minorities” have roughly equal rights as everyone else (though I certainly can’t account for every minority group as far as religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or whatever else). It’s more about the day-to-day.
Vancouver is likely one of the more multicultural cities in Canada and I’ve seen attitudes shift a lot in the last 20 some-odd years. “Outsiders” once viewed certain ethnic dishes as “weird” or “gross,” but they’re likely to embrace the authenticity or adapt it to “fusion” cuisine these days.