The generation Y, as we are often called in know-it-all magazine articles and in the marketing world by professionals trying to sound like they have a point, remember fairly the time when well (Warning: you have heard this one before) Apple and Blackberry were just fruits, BRB signified nothing more than a strange equivalent of a burp sound while cloud computing probably meant you trying to solve math equations in your dreams. That was the time when you had to talk about "What's on your mind?” you didn't have to spend time logging on the computer or to the nearest mobile device to let it out, you'd just say it - to yourself most of the time anyway.
Older times are always the simpler times as far as the civilization's rule of "thumb" is concerned. However, one rarely looks for simplicity when the idea of happiness and satisfaction continues to loom at large, unattained. And that is what we, as a global society have done – sacrificed simplicity to get closer to the larger-than-life notions of luxury, happiness and fulfillment. As a result, times have changed and times have progressed. But, have we come closer to our goal any more than we were before?
These days you see your younger cousins and siblings downloading popular album covers and screenshots of pop stars on their PSPs and internet tablets at an age when you didn't even know what popular culture meant. Back then, having a torch phone was as big a deal as owning a Blackberry Torch, though the former could do little more than just allow you to text, call or wake you up through an alarmingly shrilling tone. Scooby Doo for Ben 10, Cinderella for Hanna Montana - the comparisons that can be drawn between now and yesteryears are just endless.
And it all comes down to conclude that technologies continue to advance, the media continues to evolve – even we with our beliefs, thinking and attitudes change but to what end? To get closer to self fulfillment? To achieve a state of being where you want nothing more? Isn’t that what everybody at any point in their lives want? So when we differentiate one generation from the next, are we doing it on the basis of the number of friends they have following them on Twitter or their views on abortion or global warming?
Cause, if we are differentiating them on what they wanted from life when they were our age, there won’t be anything to draw a line from. We’d all just be exactly the same because we all want the same things - the same idea anyway. So, when your parents forget to press enter after typing a message on Gmail chat or spend most of their online time poking each other on Facebook, don’t think they are not smarter than the next fifth grader. They are just who they are - like you, a tiny speck in the great big circle of life - the circle that is nothing more than an unchanging repetition of events like birth, life and death. Even if, today you can better customize your life with a truckload of gadgets, applications and apparel, from a bird's eye view nothing has changed. We are no different from the hunters and cavemen of Stone Age trying to make ends meet.
(Here, I'd just like to take a private moment to be horrified at the fact that I have become old enough to blog a "When we were little..." rant - a rant I as a child tried so hard to avoid when it came from my folks.)
