sum of all parts

Age is much less a defining characteristic than it once was, largely due to the internet. Now that there is a meeting of minds before the presentation of the body, ageism is becoming archaic. It works both ways…just as I have friends who might have thought that I was a creepy older guy had I approached them in person, I have friends who I would have written off as naive youngsters had they approached me. These days, we get to eliminate the ‘creepy,’ ‘naive’ or whatever other generalisations before they even rear their heads. Now the first judgements are coming from much more accurate representations of who people are than appearances or years survived.

Folks are always trying to label and pigeonhole by generation…Baby Boomers, Gen X/Y, the Beat Generation and such. Traditionally, it works. In the internet age, however, things are less defined. Being thrown around now is the MySpace Generation; there are articles referencing it everywhere, but none seem capable of putting an age on it. Personally, I think that if any such name sticks and gets labeled, it’s going to be a much larger generation than we’re used to. All of us, from youngsters to geezers, were here to see in this new phenomenon and all of us joined it in its infancy; in turn all of us were equals in this new faceless, ageless universe of online communities.

I would even go so far as to say that we are a part of the first intergenerational generation.