Western marketing firms have made their business out of understanding generations that come in letters of the alphabet such as generation ‘X’, generation ‘Y’ and we are still trying to wake up generation ‘Zzzz’. Little is known about the big mover of generations and that is the generation ‘W’.
Douglas Coupland released his novel ‘Generation X’ in 1991 and it became the marketing and advertising industry handbook on defining the North American post-baby-boomers born in the decade of the 1960’s. The irony is that the so-called baby-boomers who made the ‘Gen-X’ life so miserable still owned the means of setting opinions and so they invented the sequel – a Generation ‘Y’ for those who were born in the 1970’s and emerged in the 1990s.
Apparently the natural habitat for the Generation ‘Y’ cohort was in the malls of the USA as they bounced from one boutique fashion brand to the next. If they were not spending their money in the mall then there would hardly be a reason for advertisers to identify them at all.
The definition of a generation by narrow consumer habits remains irrelevant to the vast majority of USA and Canadian citizens and it is a remote curiosity for those who live outside of North America.
It is what happens outside of the USA that brings us to the Generation ‘W’.
Before I discuss this new generation I should deal with one last USA reference and that is Generation ‘W’s evil twin – the sinister “Generation ‘Dubya’” derived from the persona, if not the image, of George ‘Dubya’ himself.
In the USA the Generation ‘Dubya’ is young, conservative and a member of the Republican Party. See how far we have come since Generation ‘X’! Fortunately like most fads this generation is not a long-term proposition and I only acknowledge it so as to not to confuse it with the more significant ‘W’.
Outside of the United States in the real world there is a generational phenomenon that is not the figment of the novelist’s imagination nor is it the pseudo science of the marketing industry. It is worthy of comment because it is the first time in the history of humanity that this generation could ever have existed or even be imagined. If it needs a letter of the alphabet at all it would be ‘W’ – for ‘World’ or pronounced ‘Double-U’ for Utilitarian and Urban.
This world generation has some unique features that are the product of the unique times.
The ‘W’ generation coincides with the truly momentous milestone that in the past 12 months, for the first time in human history, more than half the population of the world now lives in cities or urban developments instead of the past majority being in rural or non-urban environments. All this happened from a standing start in less than 10,000 years out of a several hundred thousand years’ of human history.
Secondly, until recently these urban worlds were the home of local politics and invention, fashion, opinion and news. They developed largely as separate worlds until the last 40 years when the telecommunications revolution turned that remoteness on its head. In the past millennia it could have taken centuries for any depth of dissemination of ideas to progress around the world or a matter of months in recent centuries but today instant global communication is the nature of our world.
The most important contribution to closing the gap between these city worlds is the proliferation of the television and cinema screens that have been a quantum leap for the rapid conveyance of ideas, place and aspirations.
Add to this mix the declining costs of international travel and now we have an urbanised, outwardly focussed, fashion-aware generation who are pragmatic about their ’culture’ and their geographical location in the world. This is the world of the ‘W’ Generation.
In last month’s Channel Surfing column I discussed the impact on cultures when trade in goods and ideas are given free range. When opening your doors to foreign cultures whether through 18th century explorers or 21st century television the indigenous cultures disappear or mutate to a new culture and identity.
What the ‘W’ generation has before it is the first sightings of an indigenous global culture. Over the next 150 years art, science and commerce will consolidate the remote out reaches. The memory of an indigenous culture defined by regions and sub-regions will be the subject of study on pre-21st century history. This new global culture will evolve in unison until such time as it is threatened by ‘free-trading’ with the Martians or another unlikely extra-terrestrial. In other words the ‘W’ generation is here for a long time.
The ‘W’s don’t care where the brand of clothes, drink, music or entertainment comes from. They tend not to look at the address of the manufacturer or producer. They are pragmatic and do not see themselves as warriors of nations or protectors of a local culture. Like all generations they want to define their own time and place and are not nostalgic for what their parents think is important to them. They will ‘chat’ on-line, share music and stories on-line, use mobile communications as natural extensions of their spoken language.
Out of the history of waxing and waning cultures the generation ‘W’ are starting to emerge for the first time and when they take over authority and power in the 2040s they will preside over a world where narrow cultural wars and barriers to participation in a global culture will be irrelevant. The ‘W’ generation is bypassing the geographical barriers firstly through the imagination of cinema and television and finally through the internet and travel.
When the ‘W’ Generation meet they can recognise each other because they have the same cell-phones, fashion and knowledge of the world that can only be gained by looking beyond your own border or shores to other lands and cultures. The Moroccan ‘W’ will meet the Chinese ‘W’ in Delhi and hold a conversation that might or might not revolve around television shows, fashion, music, working for trans-nationals or visiting relatives in other lands.
For this generation knowing where you live is second to knowing how to get to the nearest international airport. They will eventually be the first wave of globally aware international travellers who will know what to expect when they arrive at a new airport because they would have already experienced the cooking, the music and sites before they arrived.
This generation has little to discover about the world except their presence in it.
The growing ‘cells’ of ‘W’ generation will bury the baby boomers and overthrow the ‘x’ and ‘y’ generation. They will challenge the fallacy that their particular nation has the rights to a dominant culture or that they are defenders of a noble culture worth preserving. Local content regulation will be replaced by global content regulation.
The teenagers in Cairo sample their music over the internet as do the teenagers in Hong Kong.
They have no fear of travel or of meeting new people or having them live next door.
When the ‘M.C. Pharosan’ launched his Egyptian Hip Hop album earlier this year on the Internet he was preserving an Egyptian culture because he was born in Egypt, lived in Canada and has moved back and is participating in the urban culture of Cairo. Hip Hop has gone further and faster than rock ‘n’ roll or any other music in reaching the cities around the planet.
Where local content and culture exist will be akin to how sub-urban cultures exist in the cities around the world only the borders will be ill-defined. The ‘W’ generation will continue to gravitate to a global megalopolis such as Shanghai, New York, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Rome, Sydney, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Cairo, where the settings are right for a ‘W’-Gen to live.
This ‘W’ generation will not preserve a language or a culture that they don’t relate to. They will speak the language that allows them to speak with the most number of people. Like the generations before them they will invent their own culture and they will grow up with little respect for what the Western baby-boomers have done other than unintentionally giving them the technical tools to overthrow the status quo.
The world and influence of the growing ‘W’ generation will last a long time. It is a generation that is more likely to impact on the world around them as the ‘idea’ of W-Gen transforms the political landscape. It will be their children that clean-up the world, that put an end to xenophobia, religious bigotry, super-power hegemony and in a world economy they will value and be valued for the freedom to explore their humanity.
The ‘W’ generation is ready for study now as they emerge. They are small in number but easily identified because they at a simultaneous stage of development wherever they appear around the world. It is in a nation’s interest to find and cultivate the ‘W’-Gen as they already know that they are special and they will reform the adage of ‘Think Global, Act Local’ as they are already thinking and acting global.
