Many years ago in a land I sit in now, a genius writer, one of the main reasons I ever enjoyed reading or writing journalistic essays at all, labeled my generation, a generation younger, one may say, than the "Y" Generation, simply "Generation Z."
Hunter S. Thompson is the writer I am referring to, and the point of his labeling our generation in such a lazy way was that few of us, if any, at the time had made strong headway in defining the slight generation gap as being any different from the previous, and equally lazily labeled "Y" Generation.
(This is an old poke in the ribs carried on from one generation to another so many times throughout history it is such a rag-tag kind of insult, us laZy generations completely ignore it, and hope someone can come along with a less insulting identity for us.)
Well, as magical things happen to lazy people sometimes, technology and the corporations that create it stumbled upon the greatest fantasy world for us to live in of all time- Our own lives. They unwittingly created, with a little help from us, an alternative reality so similar to our own, but different in only a slightly subtle way, that we believe it is normal, and sound, and just.
The reality I am about to describe has yet to be clearly defined, and I also have a difficult time explaining it to people in conversation. Which is why I believe future generations will banter about this phenomena.
Case in point- Language, possibly more important than toolmaking abilities, differentiates humans from other species in a very distinct way. And, written language, most importantly, may be the form of communication most important for historians in deciphering how people lived in the past.
Historians have always studied people's letters, along with literature and journalism, as a means by which to understand how ordinary people lived their lives, in any time period. The Voice of the people, and I mean people who were not necessarily political figures and have no celebrity status is recorded in letters and journal entries, which give us a fair and balanced view of their world, their personal lives, their opinions, and their relationships in a more realistic way than modern technology now affords us.
Another literary figure that I greatly admire and that influenced me at a younger age even more than Thompson, is Jack Kerouac. Almost more important than his novels, which have influenced subsequent generations after the Beats in a profound way are the letters he left behind. I believe these have been compiled into only two volumes. Not only did he write many letters to his literary peers that influenced his own style of writing, and also predicted the plot line of a novel like On The Road, he also wrote letters to friends and family members that were not artists, poets, or writers. The first volume, which I read and studied in my early twenties, contains letters he wrote to people between the late nineteen forties, and early nineteen sixties.
These were very important letters for me personally as a creative inspiration. He recorded his life in life letters much more thoroughly, and in intensely more detail than any of his novels could possibly contain.
This is not new for any writer, or even people who did not consider themselves writers at all, to do with consistency throughout their lives all through the twentieth century, and, of course, in centuries before that, as well.
I also used to write letters to family members and friends before I relied almost exclusively, as many people do these days, on email for my main mode of communication.
The advent of email as the basic form of communication, especially including easy-to-use networking sites such as Myspace, and Facebook, is a fixture in our society both good and bad, in my opinion. Good, because it is a completely rapid means of communication. Instant messaging, and texting, as well, are exactly what they say they are- an instant, almost perfect means of communicating with other people, without any delay caused by the technology itself, and without any of us having to physically dial a telephone to reach another person.
There are various ways to criticize technology like this, but I believe the worst thing about it, that may not be truly taken into account until our generation is elderly, or even hundreds of years from now when historians and sociologists are piecing together the remnants of our current society, and our personal histories is that we may be dangerously close to leaving behind almost no written record of our lives at all. Journaling and letter writing are almost non-existent in our society today. People email, text, and blog but more often than not these little bits of dialogue and opinion sketches lack the profound nature of a historic document; the way a long-winded letter might, even if it is written by someone who is not of notorious nature, or in the public eye in any way.
The idea of our generation becoming invisible to future generations is enhanced because of the lack of a sustainable body of written word by us, even with the creation of reality television, and an increasing popularity of documentary movies being produced.
What we lose in a digital recording being it audio, or visual is the true Voice of the people, unhindered by stage fright associated with a camera being in our face, or being surrounded by our peers when we speak our feelings and opinions.
Even in an email that is not for the purpose of a quick "nice to chat" message the actual record of the email could be lost to history forever. Techies claim any email on any computer can be retrieved from the hard drive if deleted. But how many of us obsessively transfer files when we upgrade our desktops or laptops, or compulsively back things up onto disk if they do not immediately seem sustainably important?
But in today's age of paranoid thinking when even critical data from government computers can be stolen, or even simply disappear, email as a historic document just does not exist unless it is printed, or published through a third source. This creates a vacuum of invisible information, some that is vital to all of society in very important ways, and other information that may only be on a personal level but still important to the individual, or even future generations as a historical document that is simply transmitted and then forever forgotten.
The man that wanders into the desert to never be seen again may only leave behind a final text, or phone call, instead what is really important; the final words of his life, that are easier to store and decipher off of a printed, or handwritten page, than they are in an electronic database that can be destroyed with the touch of a button.
