Will the New Digital Generation Be Remembered as the Lost Digital Generation?

I think I am having a déjà vu. I think that whatever is happening to the new, shiny digital generation here in America, has already happened to the generation of my grandparents in the Soviet Union. The enthusiasm is oddly recognizable and mildly tragic.

They are not going to care about my observations. They are going to live their lives in a fantastical man-made world, and listen to the sound of their enthusiastic voices, and they will tell everybody the tale of Progress… and then they will get old, and tired, and feel empty and deceived. When the society throws them out like fuel waste – just like the post-Soviet society betrayed the generation born in 1920s – it will be them alone with the world. The role models of today, the famed disruptors and the innovators, won’t be there for them.

If they are lucky enough, their children and grandchildren will console them, and love them, and treat them with gratitude and respect – while rejecting their delusions.

While they are in the prime of their “influencing” though, I am dying to show them some old Soviet movies. The vibe is almost identical!

I never thought I would relate to the generation of people who witnessed the new, enthusiastic slogan-walkers disrupting everything left and right in the name of the bright future. But I am witnessing it, and it’s trippy!

What do you tell a person who is tragically misled and endearingly human? What do you tell a person who is marching forward like the king of the world without realizing that there is probably nothing waiting for him where he is going? Do you tell him anything? Will his great grandchildren take care of things and tell him that his ideas have expired, and that his leaders have used him – but that they still love him for having lived though a grand deception?

So many questions, so few answers. The tragedy! Beautiful culture being lost in marches. So many unique, oddly-shaped, non-algorithmic and non-sloganizable people being beaten into dullness for no reason at all other than somebody else’s misguided POV!

The tragedy, oh the tragedy of buying into other people’s mercenary narratives packaged as the Tale of Progress…

Photo credit: sovposters.ru