Language + Norms + Art * Technology = Generational Cohort

I studied four years of Latin in high school, am interested in lingua francas, and was blessed with a good ear and language acquisition skills. I was lucky enough to fall into a close-knit community of friends in Chitown and frequently traveled to Mexico City for family events. Later, I earned a Certificate in Spanish as an Additional Language from the Chicago campus of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

To be clear, I don’t speak Spanish. I speak a very specific Mexican dialect: that of an upper-middle class woman raised in Mexico City during the 80’s and 90’s. 

After decades of practice, I’m near-native in my pronunciation and naturally use common slang and phrases. If you’re a gringo who speaks Spanish, I can guarantee you that I’ll make you feel like there’s a lot of room for improvement. The dissonance of my image and the sounds coming out of my mouth is vaguely intriguing for 95% of people with whom I interact. For the rest, it’s vaguely unsettling and there’s not much I can do to help other people’s anxiety. At home, I’m effectively a “Mexican dad” and my love language with my children is in Spanish. It’s a part of my identity now. 

After surviving 8 winters in Chicago, I decided I wanted to take advantage of my language skills and seek opportunities to travel outside the United States.

In 2009, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, and China held their first summit and in 2010 BRIC became a formal institution. Following the Great Financial Crisis, Latin American economies grew relying on global demand for commodities. For two years, I was fortunate enough to live and work in Brazil, engaging with professionals in Buenos Aires, Santiago, Bogotá, and Mexico City.

During that time, I came into contact with a unique demographic: people from Europe, Asia, or the Americas who had been raised in cities around the world, often attending American or international schools, with parents from separate countries. These “third culture kids” were raised in norms that differed from their parents and also lived in a different environment during a significant part of their childhood development years. I could easily empathize with their life experience. In order to help me pin down their identity, I learned to ask where these acquaintances lived between the ages of 14 to 17. Between raging hormones, family dynamics, and educational context, I believe that age range tends to be a very formative time for all humans. 

That timeframe is when we stop listening to the music our parents listen to and start listening to the music our friends listen to. Current events, pop culture, and societal changes can have an impact on children during those years. I think it’s how generational cohorts begin to self-identify themselves: Silent, Boomer, X, Millennial, Zoomer, and much sooner than we expect, Alpha.

Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, articulated a set of rules to describe generational reactions to technologies: 

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things.

The Jedi Generation, born between 1977 and 1983 (the years the original Star Wars trilogy was released) is also known as the Oregon Trail Generation, Xennials, or Geriatric Millennials. Between 1995 and 2005 this cohort rented movies at Blockbuster and successfully programmed VCRs to record Must-See TV on Thursday night. This cohort uninstalled/reinstalled Dial-Up Networking on Windows 95 before arguing with family members who inadvertently picked up the land-line which disconnected the 56k modem they used to get on the “information superhighway.” 

After hitting Play on the VCR to watch the movie rented at Blockbuster, the audience was greeted by a bright red FBI warning which alerted to severe civil and criminal penalties for the unauthorized reproduction, distribution, rental, or digital transmission of copyrighted content.

Before the the bright and shiny revolution of blockchain and Web3.0 applications like the Metaverse, Bitcoin, and NFTs, the first “peer-to-peer” network technology product to gain mass appeal was Napster. Between 1999 and 2001, the Napster Generation, aged 15 to 35, bypassed the FBI warning and rewrote thought patterns and behaviors, redefining cultural tolerances and permission for what was acceptable. Now, the FBI warning is invisibly embedded inside Spotify.

A cohort learned Web1.0 tools, normalized personal and organizational file management capabilities in their My Documents folder, and disrupted individual, educational, and organizational workflows by converting memos and letters to e-mail, eventually inclusive of legal and financial documents. 

As they say, time marches on, and generations age. Sometimes, traumas manifest themselves. The Silent Generation experienced scarcity and World Wars, leading to policies which mitigate against catastrophes. Boomers stood on the shoulders of giants, eager to break patterns, but not always successfully. Generation X may exhibit characteristics of a “middle child”. Millennials can be self-aware of how good - and bad - they have it.

Today, the P2P lingua franca of the Napster Generation may be meme culture.

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