by Lanae Celeste

Created on: June 08, 2008

For as long as it has been popular to give each generation a cute nickname, America has been naming them. Perhaps the first was that decade of decadence, the Roaring Twenties, famous for its flappers. In succession were the Depression Generation, the Great Generation, the Baby Boomers, the Free Love Generation, the Disco Generation, the Material Generation, and the infamous Generation X. The current crop of young Americans, it seems, is the first to be named for their media: the Plugged-In Generation.

Plugged-in indeed. Most people under 20 would probably suffer from technology withdrawal without their daily dose of cell phones, iPods, MySpace, TiVo, text-messaging, and at least one type of video game console. Everyone over 20 is quickly becoming just as electronically connected. With so much communication capability at our fingertips, why is it that 87% of 18-to-24 year olds can't even find Iraq on a map?(http://archives.cnn.com/2002/EDUCATION/11/20/ge ography.quiz/)

Rather than making us all more informed citizens, it seems that the variety of media we are constantly bombarded with is having an effect akin to a certain substance called soma. In the literary world of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, the drug soma keeps the masses happy, complacent, and working hard at their jobs without stopping to question why they're working. In the literal world, a constant stream of media keeps Americans happy, complacent, and working hard at their jobs without stopping to question why they're working. Both the real world and the fictive one have economies based on mass consumerism. Was Huxley peering into the future when he wrote his novel in 1932?

If he was looking ahead, the future seems to be now. The problem is that as more and more types of media become accessible by the mainstream culture, the data being relayed tends more and more towards entertainment. That's fine for things that are supposed to be entertaining, but troubling when serious matters like the political process and news have become transformed into something resembling a three-ring circus, with all of the bells and whistles.

It is sad that as a country we feel that we need to be entertained by our news. Does this mean that we have become conditioned to be incapable of absorbing complex issues if they cannot be summed up with a few flashy graphics and some choice sound bytes? Have we lost our ability to separate important issues from trivial matters? It certainly seems that way. On the most recent Election

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