How different are we from Gen Z, and does it matter?

Created in 2005, a vision of the web in 2015 captured in an article written by Apple*. It’s interesting how we like to couch phenomena as new with reference to an axis in point and time.

Take the statement that the current generation trusts information at a personal level rather than the institution.

To certify this, we’d need to understand how we trusted say in the 90s or even before, when there was no social media and then ask did we trust people we’d never met before in person, before the Internet?

For the latter you’d have to dismiss penpals, going to clubs like scouts,
Amateur (Ham) Radio, Bulletins and Notice Boards in parks and shops, and Community Newspapers/Newsletters. We’d never met the people here before.

What does this tell us? That weighted against the current generation, people have always had a predilection to connect. It begs the question then whether if the Internet was around in the 1980s would people be any different from today?

And trust? You’ll hear terms like vertical, personal, matrix, dispersed as descriptors for Trust. Yes, nothing like a term to try to frame a phenomena. But what’s really going on? Was there a trust level in the 90s that differed between institution and personal?

Did you listen to Chris Tarrant on Capital Radio because you liked Capital Radio. Did we tune into John Peel’s Home Truth’s because we liked the brand BBC Radio 4? People were personal brands way back and before then.

Before the internet, the 90s was a playground for cable, and I happened to be part of one of the stable , Channel One TV. The stats showed the station peaked with viewers that challenged local BBC outputs. Why? BBC was a brand, Channel One was hardly one.

Technology is a mediator that provides fresh ways of living and going about the world. Invariably it appears it’s not so much the radical change in behaviour of humans, but the impact tech has to enable them to navigate new paths.

Take our adoption of fake news and misinformation. Take a dive into the Mohawk Valley Formula of how industry bosses used psychology and media to beat the unions. This was the 1930s.

There’s a persistent need to describe change and new phenomena — even when there really isn’t. Our amnesia is a global industry necessary to build new products and artefacts for commerce. But this isn’t so clear cut. The brilliant scholar and my mentor Brian Winston described the circularity of behaviour and tech as a social necessity.

Way back in the 1920s at the birth of radio, engineers cracked how radio could be two-way. Imagine you could actually talk back to the presenter ( like a podcast). Bosses rejected the idea with the DG reportedly saying “The public aren’t ready for it!”

Ham radio would develop, and some 60 years later we’re doing podcasts. Somehow we’re very different beings.

*Apple piece written in 2005 looking at 2015 and the Outernet