I recently did an opening keynote in Bergen, Norway for an organization called Norwegian Audience Development. I will write more about audience development in light of generational change in subsequent posts. In my presentation I discuss the works of historians William Strauss and Neil Howe and...
[caption id="attachment_2375" align="alignleft" width="320"] Did family sitcoms change from this...
A picture is worth a thousand words, but I don't have near enough infographics on this blog! So here's my very special Election Day Post that aspires to be the pop-cultural, right brained amateur version of Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog. Well not quite exactly, but...
“How do I love (bankrupt) thee? Let me count the ways.”
This election year it’s hard not to take note of all the various ways in which the next generation is screwed. Younger cohorts will struggle with student loans, possibly endure continued high unemployment rates, foot most of the bill from the national deficit and suffer the effects of a national economy that has paid out more than it has taken in over a long time. The Z’ers, or Homelanders, see their grown up sisters and brothers test their wingspan only to return back to the safety of parental den when things go wrong. They are advised that an expensive college degree is the only means to a comfortable future, yet that there are no guarantees for anything anymore. One would think in a time when individuals feel the effects of a troubled economy family bonds grow stronger. And they do. Many parents gladly open up their homes to boomeranging grown children and quarterback them each time they test their employment muscles in the slow job market. But what the long-term financial security? If the younger generations are going to be held back for decades by the locked doors they meet now won’t family assets once again gain importance as a source of income? If neither a college degree nor a mortgage seems like a good investment you should at least be able to look forward to your fair share of the family estate. Right?
When the New Silents look back on the month of January 2012, they might recall a few contradictory events that had bearings on how they handle digital information. On January the 5th Sweden officially recognized Det Missionerande Kopimistsamfundet (the Missionary "Copy-me" society) by granting it religious status, which in essence sanctifies the act of file sharing. This
political gift to file sharers can only be seen as endowing moral righteousness to an activity that usually is viewed as immoral and illegal. Contrarily, on January 18th websites like Wikipedia, Google, Reddit, Mozilla and others blacked out their websites in protests of the anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA that were up for voting in the U.S.
Congress. Anti anti-piracy advocates argued the bills if enacted were flawed and would go far beyond preventing illegal file sharing, but in reality open the floodgates for internet censorship. After 4 million petition signatures and 250,000 messages to Congress, several legislators changed their minds and killed the bills. For now anyway. Yet the very next day FBI
How will the unemployment and economic recession (or recessions as it more looks like) affect the New Silents in the U.S.? Amongst several dismal prognoses, over a quarter of this generation is expected to endure child poverty - and that is a conservative estimate. Derek Thompson...
