The young people of today are the most powerful generation, ever. They have more power at their fingertips than any emperor in history.
The Protests of the 1960’s & 1970’s
Some years ago a college student told me that today’s students are much less influential than the students of the 1960’s and ’70’s. They wouldn’t be able to accomplish what young people did 30, 40 years ago: war protests, civil rights, feminism, capitalist and government exploitations.
I was stunned. Today’s students are the most powerful generation. Ever.
In the history of the world.
Open Source Tools
Progress was rare when power was held by a few people. Public participation changed everything.
Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths:
From Alexander to Hitler to the Corporation.
Click the image for more information.
In a previous post I talked about working with WikiPedia. When our organization first contacted them, they were the #19 website in the world. They were working with fewer paid employees than a fast food outlet, their internal administration was in turmoil, they were struggling for funds, and yet they were competing with and surpassing massively-funded corporate websites such as Amazon, CNN, Google, and Microsoft.
Today they are the #10 website in the world. But that is still only part of the picture. Wikipedia is still competing with websites investing billions in outlay, and taking in many billions more in revenues. The Wikipedia budget, however, is only in the tens of millions, perhaps as low as $25 million. This is a demonstration of the strength of collaboration and openness, and free participation. This is an example of the powerful tools available to young people today.
Look at Youtube, WordPress, eBay, Reddit, Twitter, Linux, and the entire OpenSource movement. Using freely available software, and new technologies — Internet, eMail, texting, tweeting, ListServes, message boards, social networking, blogs, eZines, podcasts, live audio/video streaming, RSS, cell phones, cell phone cameras, cell phone video cameras — the public, overwhelmingly students and young adults, have created trillions of dollars in profit for individuals and corporations.
The Power
Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, the Bourbon Kings, the Czars of Russia: none of them had a tiny fraction of the power that young people have today, at their fingertips. Nor did the protestors of the 1960’s and 1970’s, two generations back.
So what could students accomplish if they decided to change our country and our world, to benefit themselves, to benefit their descendants, to benefit everyone? What social, political, economic, and educational revolutions & evolutions could they produce?
It is said that you can’t fight City Hall. I have some experience in that arena: It is actually quite easy to fight City Hall, if you know what you’re doing.
It’s the media you can’t fight. The media control the message. The media is unbeatable.
Fighting City Hall
Unless you are also media. Then you can fight the media, head-on and toe-to-toe.
And today, young people represent a media network vastly larger, and potentially much more powerful than CNN, Fox, BBC, Reuters, Gannett, and Associated Press, put together. In fact, the new media that today’s young people understand and control, has radically changed the very concept of media itself. This new media could easily eclipse – and even obviate – traditional broadcast and print media.
Continued below…
Think about it. Previously, media was a bit of a misnomer, because it referred not only to the platform, but also to the content. Today? The most powerful medium is the Internet, cell phones, and personal computers.
Who Controls the Content
And increasingly, the content is controlled by the public. Web 2.0 blew up, and blew apart, both medium and message. More and more, corporations only control the platform. And the message?
That is controlled by people. Overwhelmingly it is controlled by young people.
Darwin, Dada, Dalí, Duke, & Devadevàya
Civilizations evolve because ideas evolve. Click the image for more information.
Or it could be if they just realized it. Students and young adults have the ability to completely control the message. If they decided to, there would be nothing the press, the pundits, the pols, nor the plutocrats could do about it.
This has become readily apparent in the current and previous Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns. You don’t have to support Bernie or his agenda to recognized what he has accomplished. As the media shilled for their preferred parties, ideologies and candidates, an old fogey – the gruff, growling, bent-over and anti-photogenic Sanders, with his felonious hair and his socialist outrages – emerged from the cheap seats, challenged the status quo, and irrevocably changed politics everywhere.
New Media
If the traditional media weren’t so, well, traditional, it would realize that the world is already leaving it behind. In the progress of humanity, radical candidates with radical messages are minor considerations. Future historians will not talk about Trump. They may not even talk about Bernie.
But they will definitely talk about the revolution Bernie created. Bernie does not need to win the election to win the war. He has already changed the nature of elections and politics.
Everywhere.
Forever.
The Most Powerful Generation
And Bernie did this by tapping into the most powerful generation. Young people are the key to creating a truly democratic movement, one where the people have direct and immediate control of their government.
Today’s young people are not powerless. They have more power than anyone has ever had.
They have so much power it’s scary.
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Texting in the Rain courtesy of Garry Knight via Flickr.
The obvious question is: “What will they do with this ability”? Those who have the ability to mold the future…will they do so wisely, or squander it for short-term, selfish goals? I guess only time will tell!
I would have to disagree with your premise that because there is more open communication and processes to make communication easier that “today’s students are the most powerful generation”. Look back on the late 60’s and early 70’s and compare the changes the young people made with massive demonstrations and student unrest and compare that to much of the current student activities. Where that generation was directing all of its attention to an unjust war and the unnecessary deaths and injuries brought on for political reasons, today’s generation is more interested in hurt feelings when someone says or does something they don’t like. If someone said or did something to the 60’s generation that hurt someones feelings, the answer was, “get over it”. Today, universities and schools go out of their way to shelter kids from “hurt feelings” You don’t like a conservative speaker on campus to present opposing views, ban the speaker. You don’t like GOP supporters chalking the head of Trump on campus, complain that it is offensive and the school investigates who did it.
This generation might have the tools to be the most powerful, but the baby boomers and the Gen X parents have raised a generation of wusses that can’t handle opposing views and accept that others have opposing views and debate the good and bad of both perspectives. If they don’t like an ideology or position taken by someone else, that position should be eliminated. And the way they do that is by complaining that it is offensive.
“Get over it”. Taking positions on things that matter, using the technology that they have in hand will make them the “most powerful”. As long as they complain about something they don’t like being offensive and others shelter them from that, then they will just continue to be “wusses”.
I hadn’t really considered that aspect but there’s certainly some truth there. Perhaps “most empowered” is closer.
Political correctness is foreclosing in-depth discussion of serious topics. Professors are frightened to teach controversial subjects. Famous comedians (some with notably liberal stances in real life) are refusing to play for college audiences. “Micro-aggression” is coming into vogue as the newest buzzword — think of it as PC amplified exponentially. Where I can often see some value in PC, I’m having trouble seeing any with “micro-aggression” and tend to see it as a passive-aggressive horror, an attempt to assume power without necessarily possessing any of the qualities typically associated with wielding power–knowledge, leadership, etc.
Consensus seems to form around ideas that are more narcissistic than altruistic.
Or I may simply be too pessimistic. Sander’s campaign is breaking all the records in both the way and the amount of contributions it’s raising.
Ron, as a person of the generation you have ill-feelings towards let me clarify a few things. While there are definitely universities and people of this generation that have taken a stance against any verbiage that isn’t all inclusive, that isn’t saying it is an entire generation is in equal agreement about all social issues. One thing I appreciate about the baby-boomer generation is that many of them question the mass media and some of the things they project. Unfortunately, this idea of the millennial generation being sensitive “wusses” is something I find certain media outlets highlighting from a select handful of more liberal universities. Having gone and graduated from university in the south somewhat recently, this is not an accurate depiction of my experience and others that I know. Yes, there is more conversation around what is acceptable but we still have a club for conservative discussions and right leaning students. Unfortunately it appears your opinion of an entire generation is based off of what the media has told you, which sadly prevents you from finding common ground with the people who will be eventually running the world.
I’d also like to provide a few details about what I believe my generation is doing right to further humanity. We’re having larger conversations regarding women in the workforce and how to grant equal opportunities for everyone. This isn’t just about equal pay but to show women that they can pursue roles that were previous deemed unfeminine or “manly”. We’re also pushing for more racial equality because there are still many instances of racism that happen even after the civil rights movement. For example, Bloomberg instantiated a program that Im sure you’re familiar with called “Stop and Frisk”, which was proven to be a highly discriminatory policing program in New York. We also are extremely vigilant in preserving earth for future generations. i was initially skeptical of all the media coverage of “climate change” years ago, but after finding many reputable-independent studies on the subject, it is a very real thing that we must tackle in the next few decades.
Lastly, I think the biggest thing to highlight here is that all of this wouldn’t have been possible to the scale we’ve seen without the internet and the resources that Mr. Abraham listed above. So in essence, we’ve gained mass movement across countries for some of the issues above almost entirely build on the backbone of internet communication. Before I go, I hope that instead of being upset at an entire generation about things you disagree with that different generations can work together and find common ground on the things that really matter.
The younger generation is more aware of politics due to the easy access of Internet . Therefore , are easily persuaded as to who to vote for. Our generation tended to follow our parents ideas on politics simply because we had no access to social media. Most of the time we had to watch their television channel of preference. This generation would most likely jump on the Internet to find a topic of their interest.