Monday, December 3, 2007

where are the leaders of my generation?

26

By the time Ben Franklin was my age he had written all his Silence Dogood letters, moved to Philadelphia, been to London and back, and started The Pennsylvania Gazette. By the time Alexander Graham Bell was my age he was well on his way to inventing the telephone, which he patented at the age of 29. By the time Elvis was my age, he was a Hollywood superstar, was 5 years beyond the Ed Sullivan show, and singlehandedly invented rock 'n' roll as far as the general public knew. By the time Bob Dylan was my age he had released a handful of albums that are still widely regarded as some of the most influential in 50 years. By the time John Lennon was my age the Beatles had released everything prior to Sgt. Pepper's, thereby permanently changing the course of musical history and redefining celebrity. By the time Bill Gates was my age he had dropped out of Harvard, Microsoft was 5 years old, and MS-DOS was well on it's way with IBM as a customer. By the time Michael Jackson was my age, he had already abandoned the Jackson 5 and released Thriller (the greatest selling album of all time) which laid out the template for almost all pop music released in a decade.

I wonder what positive influence my generation (Generation Y; the generation of entitlement, MTV and Internet) has had on the world around it so far. What ideas, inventions, art or music, etc have we as a group contributed to move humanity a step forward? Are we as a group so entitled to everything that we ultimately contribute nothing? And what about myself specifically? Maybe I'm a few years impatient. I guess the one person that comes to mind is Mark Zuckerberg (23 yrs), creator of facebook.com. Other than him, I'm having a hard time beyond David Heinemeier Hansson (28 yrs), creator of the Rails framework. The jury is of still out on the magnitude of Rails' importance, but its adoption has proven a great deal of merit so far... it sure as hell pales in comparison to Revolver, the telephone or MS-DOS though. I know there is genius in my generation, so where is it? Are we to be represented by Brittany Spears? God help us.

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