It’s hard to believe that we have finally entered the second half of the second decade of the new millennium. So much has changed only in the past 5 years: cloud computing and mobile are mainstream, 3D printers can be bought at the local office supplier and Uber is a verb. (When a noun becomes a…
Picture, picture, smile for the picture Pose with your brother, won’t you be a good sister? Everyone thinks that we’re perfect Please don’t let them look through the curtains. In her debut single “Dollhouse” last year, Generation Z artist and idol Melaine Martinez plays a little girl’s doll who ends every chilling refrain with: “I see…
It’s probably no surprise that “after the millennials” has been one of my key search terms for a while. I first started researching this generation in their infancy in the early 2000s, at a time when very little had yet been written about them. Covering this topic felt very much like entering a land where no man or woman has ever been. Then…
One of the obligatory yearly conferences a professional futurist should attend is the one set up by World Future Society. I feel particularly obliged to attend since I am representing the Central Texas Chapter of the WFS in Austin as vice president. But alas, I haven’t attended since being a student in 2002 when I…
I recently came across an article in Aeon called “Against Generations“, which is one of the harshest, yet most eloquent critiques of generational research I have read. Author Rebecca Onion disagrees with the epistemological justification for segmenting people based on age cohort, and (rightly) contends that much of the research is arbitrary and the categories…
Research Chefs Association is the leading professional community for food research and development. Its members are the pioneers of the discipline of Culinology – the blending of culinary arts and the science of food. I recently attended their conference on the Future of Food, where I held a speech about Generation Z and their attitudes…
Ford’s recent report on Generation Z fails to mention the most obvious elephant in the room: Teens don’t care about cars anymore. Statoil recently published three scenarios for energy use in 2040. Not even the most low-carbon scenario envisioned the possibility that fossil fuels could constitute less than 75% of total energy consumption in 25 years. It…
Last year we made some Generation Z predictions for 2014. How did these hold up? “1. They will bring at least one household item out of obscurity.” While nothing is really holding the same momentum as rubberbands and duct tape did, DIY is still a strong trend. A pretty hot trend these days is the decorating…
One of the most important generationally relevant must-reads from last week is this piece from Dr. Profeta . It was republished at slowfamilyliving, a website that goes against the grain of our era’s current tendency to hyperparent. In his Your Kid And My Kid Are Not Playing In The Pros Dr. Profeta weights in on the…
The White House recently released a report where they labeled the youngest generation the “Homeland Generation”. A storm of speculations hit the internet soon after. How could the U.S. government choose such a paranoid and xenophobic-sounding epithet? Was this a creepy joke? Some claimed the White House took the name out of thin air. Others…
