I think that the constant generation bashing that is so prevalent today neglects to address a multitude of issues, but most importantly, it never asks the question of why people are a certain way.

First and foremost, I want to address the fact that generation bashing is not new. In two articles listed here:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/millennial-bashing-medieval-times-180964003/

and here:

https://qz.com/quartzy/1264118/the-2500-year-old-history-of-adults-blaming-the-younger-generation/

you can see that blaming young people has always been the go-to reaction for the aging populace as the status-quo continues to shift.

Whether it’s Geoffrey Chaucer fearing that young people are going to destroy language, or Boomers afraid that Millennials are going to destroy the napkin industry, young people drive trends, and thus, receive much of the blame for disruption of the comfortable.

In response to the accusations leveled at Millennials and Gen Z on Canvas, I would say that, according to the statistics in the iGen book, they are, for the most part false- I can’t really argue with the statistics that say iGen is generally harder working than Gen X and Boomers. However, there are elements of truth in the accusations directed at us. We are generally more adrift in the world and afraid to choose paths, for example.

However, It is important to note that the expectations and attitudes surrounding adolescence and are shifting.

In this article: https://growingleaders.com/blog/the-biggest-changes-generation-z-brings-to-the-adult-world/, it is pointed out that young people are entering adolescence and leaving it later. What this means for the iGeneration, is that at the ages that our parents and grandparents were essentially forced into adulthood, the iGen has much more time to develop, and thus may not be “as developed” as previous generations were at that age.

Another aspect to consider is the increasing life-expectancy- the longer you’re alive, the more time you have to become an adult. As people are living longer, their roles, and that what is expected of them is changing- elongating and stretching into the future. When you consider the average life expectancy of a US male in 1945, when my grandparents were born (63.7 years) and compare that to the average life expectancy of a US male in 1999, when I was born (76.58), you can see that at age 20, my grandparents would have been roughly 30% to the life expectancy of their time. However, if you extrapolate that percentage back over the life expectancy when I was born, you can see that the age conversion equals roughly age 24. Much like inflation calculators for money over time, I think it’s important to extrapolate age equivalency over time as well, to get a proper inter-generational picture of a developmental curve. In terms of developmental expectations, at age 20 it is fair to compare someone of the iGen not to what a Boomer had accomplished at age 20, but rather, due to the difference in expectations and valuews du to a longer life span, would be more accurate to be compared to that of what a Boomer had accomplished at age 16.5. (20 yrs/76.58 = 0.2611, which is the percent of life we have accomplished. multiply this times 63.6, and you get 16.61 yrs, the rough equivalency in terms of life span percentage.)

And lastly, I would like to point out that many of the problems pointed out in the Canvas page, when they are present in noticeable amounts, are almost always due to bad parenting present during the iGener’s formative years. Just as a reminder, poor parenting falls squarely on the parents, who would be Gen X :). So if Gen x and Boomers want to blame iGen and Milllenials for being raised poorly, they have to own the fact that they are the ones who failed that generation by “not raising them right”.

I found this documentary both informative and quite entertaining as well. It’s the first doc I’ve seen that actually pays attention to kids who’ve grown up in the internet age by actually interviewing them and letting them talk about why and how they are doing what they do on the internet. However, I would like to point out that they seemed to cherry pick the most extreme “like-dependency” cases to showcase to paint kids as dumb, blind, hungry consumers, who had no idea what they were doing data wise, and that bothered me quite a bit.

One spot where this was most clear was in the interview with the “Tumblr girl” who was such a big fan of Hunger Games, particularly in the case of her Twitter. When she mentioned how much she was tweeeting this actor, and that she got a response, I paused the video and looked at his actual response, which was :

“Check it off your list. Now go save the world! And HURRY!”

Now, I don’t know if thats quoting the books, the movies, or none of that, but to me all this tweet says is “PLEASE STOP TWEETING AT ME, YOU ARE MAKING MY TWITTER UNUSABLE”, but in the nicest, most polished way possible. The fact that she can’t see this is pretty sad, and further reinforced the stereotype that these kids really don’t know what they’re doing.

While this documentary does point out how big of an advertising engine the internet is, I think they misjudge how “smooth” they think companies are with marketing to kids. This is because, even though teens are putting what they are interested in on social media for companies to see and use for advertising, what people like is changing so much faster that by the time a company gets done making an ad, those trends are out of fashion. This has one of two results: either the company runs the ad anyways and seems like a parent trying to use new slang to be cool to their kid, or they don’t run the ad and thereby lose a lot of money. Because they tend to opt for the former, companies seem even less connected to teens now, and teens know that! I’m reminded of an old saying, by this kind of advertising, and I think I’ll end with it:

“It is better to be thought a fool and remain silent, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

I personally agree with that this author says, at least ideologically. We have become to connected (and addicted!) to our technology that I can see it becoming a problem around me. My friends are constantly checking to see how many likes their most recent post got, I spend hours of my day mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, and we’ve started having legitimate panic-attacks when we leave our phones at home. Something has to change!

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Internet! I’m not some Luddite who is saying that we should all disconnected from the internet, the grid, and live off of canned beans in bunkers while wearing aluminum-foil hats. Instead, we should limit how much Internet content we consume, and be discerning in what we do consume. In fact, I think we have some of the greatest learning and self improvement opportunities in the history of the planet at our finger-tips; we just have to use them right.

The Internet is just lie the food we eat. We all know that there are foods that are good for us, and foods that are not-so-good for us. We also all know that too much of any food- “good” or “bad” is unhealthy. However, it’s up to us to decide what we eat, and in what quantities. Personally, I have been struggling as of late to eat better in in more appropriate proportions, and its not easy- but its whats good for me. In the same way, I believe that we all need to be consuming internet more critically and in less quantities, lest we continue to grow Internet-Obese.

I would like to start by summarizing what I believe the author is saying in this chapter: That as the world becomes further depended on data and data analysis tools for much of our daily lives and professions, those with access to this information now have a knife edge to walk. That is to say, as the benefits of further analytics increase, as do the risks and possible negative outcomes as well.

Overall, I very much agree with this author, both before and after reading the article. While this article has what is essentially a fire-hose of data to support each argument (ironic), this is a subject that has been at the forefront of my mind as of late thanks to classes and personal readings I’ve engaged in over the last year or so.

One area where I can confidently disagree with the author, however, is on the area of application of big-data to the Agriculture industry. That’s not to say that the author is wrong- quite the contrary, actually. I’d say the author would be more or less correct with their assessment of the application of big-data if the chapter was written around, say, 1975. (A year that I can substantiate with data of my own).

For example, the chapter states that:

“The Green Revolution introduced new technologies and practices involving hybrid seeds, irrigation, pesticides, and fertilizer. Even Since then though, farmers have tended to work off a fixed schedule for planting, fertilizing, pruning, and harvesting their crops without much regard for changing weather and climate conditions or the changing little details in each field; farming as an extension of the industrial age.”

It was at this point that I knew the author, to say it politely, had no concept of how a farm actually operated, in any way, whatsoever. I can confidently say this, as I grew up farming, and my family has farmed for the past 16 generations or so (the last 8 of which were in the United States). The quote above regarding the practices of farming not flexing to conditions is not only wrong, it is quite frankly the literal opposite of how farming operates. I would argue, in fact, that the Agriculture industry was actually one of the first areas where what we now call “big-data” was born- in the form of almanacs. According to Wikipedia, they have been around for thousands of years, and had as many as 400,000 being produced in England annually around the mid 16th century. An almanac is essentially the prediction of future weather events, based on previous years of complied data, as weather patterns usually are cyclical over the course of years, decades and centuries, and thus could be argued is the first wide spread example of big-data.

While modern advances in technology have made the computations easier, all of the benefits of big-data computations can, and have, been seen by farmers in the past. The “tractor being able to sense what each square inch of soil needs” as the author hints that “might be possible in the future” not has existed in actual technological form since the mid-1980s, but any farmer worth his salt and that knows basic plant science and chemical deficiencies of the field already should know. This is math that I could, and did do as a 9 year old, and I joined a major that doesn’t use math because it doesn’t come easily to me.

And in case you were wondering how I came up with the year 1975 earlier as the approximate date of data application the author was implying, his fascination with planters that were “up to 30 feet wide” made me laugh out loud. No. Seriously. We operate a relatively small farm, and we’ve been using 30ft planters for the last 25 years. Our old planter (which was ANCIENT as far as planters go) was a 30ft, and it was only the second largest model in the line-up when it was built in 1975. The largest production model planter in the world was introduced in 2009 and is 120 feet wide, 4 times the width that boggled he mind of the author.

Again, the author is absolutely correct in his assessment that big-data will make a big splash through Precision Agriculture, but he is about 45 years late.

Other than this large discrepancy in actuality in that one portion of the chapter, I entirely agree with his overall assessment that big-data and data analytics are much like nuclear energy, in that while there are significant benefits to be reaped, there are also significant risks and nefarious uses for the same technology. The cat can’t be put back in the bag as far as this technology is concerned, and it is our job as Christians to look discerningly at it it and continually re-evaluate if we are using it in a manner that is in line with being a good steward of that data.

Just making sure the new blog works 🙂

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

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