In late January, John Palfrey, director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, was interviewed on NPR’s “On the Media” about the generation to which the artists in “Younger Than Jesus” belong. He calls them “digital natives,” and has a website devoted to his study of the group. Click this link to listen to the NPR segment, and this link to visit Palfrey’s Digital Natives website. Palfrey is also author of the book Born Digital, a copy of which is available for browsing in the Live Archive, the “Younger Than Jesus” resource center on the museum’s fifth floor.
Posts in the ‘Related Reading, Media, and Events’ Category
A generational divide in Cambodia; protesters use new technology in Moldova
April 8, 2009 | YTJIn the last two days, the New York Times has published articles that touch on generational divides in other parts of the world: Cambodia and Moldova. In yesterday’s paper, “Pain of Khmer Rouge Era Lost on Cambodian Youth,” by Seth Mydans, begins:
Thirty years after the killing stopped, Cambodia suffers from a particularly painful generation gap — between those who survived the brutal rule of the Communist Khmer Rouge and their children, who know very little about it.“I used to tell my children the stories, but they only believed a tiny bit, like nothing,” said Ty Leap, 52, who sells noodles and fruit drinks from a roadside stall. “I don’t like it, but what can you do? It really is unbelievable that those things happened.”
For nearly four years, from 1975 to 1979, the Communist Khmer Rouge caused the deaths of 1.7 million people from overwork, starvation and disease as well as torture and execution as they attempted to construct a peasant utopia.
Almost everyone here of a certain age has stories to tell of terror, abuse, hunger and the loss of family members.
“Some older people get so upset at their children for not believing that they say ‘I wish the Khmer Rouge time would happen again; then you’d believe it,”’ Mr. Ty Leap said.
Protesters storm the presidential building in Moldova (Photo: Vadim Denisov/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images)
In today’s paper, a story reporting on anti-communist protests in Moldova emphasizes the protesters’ use of text messages and Twitter to spontaneously mobilize. Ellen Barry, reporting from Moscow, notes:
A crowd of more than 10,000 young Moldovans materialized seemingly out of nowhere on Tuesday to protest against Moldova’s Communist leadership, ransacking government buildings and clashing with the police.
Protesters opposed to Moldova’s Communist leaders threw a sofa out a window in Parliament in the capital on
The sea of young people reflected the deep generation gap that has developed in Moldova, and the protesters used their generation’s tools, gathering the crowd by enlisting text-messaging, Facebook and Twitter, the social messaging network.The protesters created their own searchable tag on Twitter, rallying Moldovans to join and propelling events in this small former Soviet state onto a Twitter list of newly popular topics, so people around the world could keep track.
If this subject interests you, it’s worth noting that Ethan Zuckerman, who is participating in the “Younger Than Jesus” panel “Networked Equality” on May 30, discusses the use of new technologies to organize protests in an essay included in Younger Than Jesus: The Reader.
Related Reading: “My Facebook, My Self”
April 6, 2009 | YTJ
Kitty Baker Scrapbook, Norfolk, VA, about 1916. From Scrapbooks: An American History.
Last month, Jessica Helfand posted to the website Design Observer a consideration of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century scrapbooks, a subject she discusses in her recent volume Scrapbooks: An American History, and Facebook. An odd juxtaposition, it would seem. Yet the text makes a plausible claim for her observation that “the very perception of what is public versus what is private is a fundamentally generational conceit. It is also, as it happens, a visual one.” An excerpt:
Where Facebook is concerned, the line between public and private exists in a sort of parallel (though oddly torqued) universe: like scrapbooks, Facebook is comprised of pages with amalgamations of diverse content, all held together by an individual’s own process of selection. Generally speaking, there is a pronounced appreciation for nostalgia, alternately endearing (how adorable you were at 15!) and excruciating (how appalling you look at 50!). Just like scrapbooks, there is a fair amount of posturing and proselytizing, bad grammar and bizarre juxtapositions. There’s a scarcity of snark. And an almost evangelical devotion to stuff: where scrapbook-makers once pasted in pictures of their favorite film stars, Facebook encourages the construction of fan pages, as well as groups to join, causes to support, and so forth.
“But when it comes to posting actual images, the similarity ends somewhat abruptly,” she continues. To read the rest, click here.
Related Reading: “In Defense of Generation Y”
April 6, 2009 | YTJ
Barack Obama speaking with young voters. Photo: Kathy Willens/Associated Press.
Last November, not long after Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, Splice Today published an article by Sarah McClutchy that suggested the presidential campaign “upended a number of common misconceptions about the ‘young voter’ demographic.” An excerpt:
With polls showing a record voter turnout from the allegedly apathetic 18-24 age group, a demographic which favored Mr. Obama two-one, it’s evident that the Hawaiian-born Barry O was able to rally this cynical, sloth-like group of Americans to not just care about politics, but to support his cause overwhelmingly. The Obama camp achieved this through acute comprehension of the experiences, needs, goals, ideals, and collective consciousness of the Millennial Generation.
For those of us born somewhere on the cusp of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush years, Obama’s message of change is a concept that resonates with us differently and perhaps more profoundly than any other age group in America. As we grew up over the past decade or so, many circumstances have fostered a great skepticism and a widespread feeling of unease, even outrage, amongst us.
To read the rest, click here.
