This year, I believe the revolution was televised. Mine is a generation that has seen the expansion of comunications go from the Daily News and Morning Television to tiny computers that fit our pocket. Computers that can send sound, images, and text almost instantly across the globe. Where the generation before would stage their protests in the hope that it would be filmed, or photographed and end up on the cover of Newsweek, ours can take the footage with a small handheld device and have it up on the internet, viewed by MILLIONS, in the matter of hours.
We missed the Industrial Revolution. Many of us watched The Cold War end and the Berlin Wall come down. I have a piece of that wall on my mantel. It was brought to me by our foreign exchange student, whom to this day, is still one of my closest and most dearest friends. But even still, there was a sense of fear in our government. An Old Guard that still remembered Pearl Harbor being bomded. That felt the cold chill of nuclear attack looming over them. A mentality that prevented an honest and open dialoug between countries different from ours.
Then there were those that came out of the Civil Rights and Anti-War movement of the Sixties. They looked toward D.C. with the idea that they could make things better. They could make things different. But the road was long and it was hard, because the Old Guard feared them too. Many were convinced to take the same stance, or the Old Guard’s progeny replaced them and perpetuated that fear.
But along comes a new generation. One that looks restless, aimless, and disinfranchised. A generation that has not known a Cold War because it has ended. Instead we see our parents who had accomplished so many things they set out to do, but once they accomplished those goals, what then? Well, we have Prosperity. We have Growth and Innovation. We have a technological revolution that was the breaking tide after landing on the moon. We consumed, but we felt empty.
To fill that emptiness, we turned toward new forms of communications. Phone, and then email, and then chat rooms, and then massive online communities that span the globe. We learned that there were things for which to fight. Innovations that haven’t worked as planned, such as agriculture, or energy, or ways of governance. But yet we floundered.
Almost every day I‘ve talk to peopl e from all over the globe. People who see the world differently. People that have a different type of government and yet still thrive and are happy. I’v talked to people who have witnessed immense atrocities in places like Africa and the Middle East. I talk to people who have seen terrible things here in our own country. We talked and discussed and have seen and thought of better ways to do things. But it was just talk, because we didn’t know where to start.
The Old Guard has accomplished many things, and Their Progeny have done more. Much of it was good, or with good intent. But after their goals were accomplished they floundered. They lost direction, and our generation floundered with them. But then, we started to Communicate. We became active, we started to think and discuss. We had information and each other at the touch of a button. We became The Age of Communication.
The only thing missing was inspiration. A good swift Kick in the Pants. Someone who saw this new communications as the tool needed to bring a aimless generation together. To make us step out and blink our eyes against the sunlight. To realize that action is required to make the communication worth something.
This year, my country did not elect a single person to fix all the problems. We elected a leader that inspires us out of apathy. A leader that has convinced not only our country that we can make a difference, but that this large, and shrinking, world can communicate to make a difference. We COMMUNICATED a revolution and the Old Guard and their Progeny have been found lacking.
They heard our message from the ivory tower.
We cannot look to one person and one government to solve the world’s problems. That has been put in our hands. We must look around and say “What do I want my world to look like in 100 years?”
And then, we must roll up our sleeves and get to work.