by Christopher Kendalls

Created on: October 20, 2008

Generation X, who were formerly passed off as losers and slackers by Time magazine in the 1990 article "Proceeding with Caution" in which a number of educational guesses were being made about the impact that my generation, if any, would make on the world never received the benefit of the doubt. In fact it was not until Time revisited the concept again in 1997 with "Great Expectations of So-Called Slackers" suggesting that the purchasing power of that generation was misunderstood and more of less claiming that they were wrong, without truly admitting that they were wrong that people truly understood and "got" my generation. We worshiped heroin addicts like Kurt Cobain, and subscribed to the ideology of groups like Public Enemy after all so perhaps we were now finally back on course. Still tongue-in-cheek, Time magazine revisits the topic once again in this latest article, "Gen-X: The Ignored Generation", they talk about the latest efforts of a 40 year old Gen-Xer, Jeff Gordiner, to clearly outline the enormous contribution that Generation X has made to America culturally.

Gordiner suggests that Generation X kept America from sucking, and that all of the websites that Generation Y is addicted to were created by Generation X, and so on and so forth. As entertaining and intellectually stimulating that is it begs the question as to if the original differentiation between the generations is even relevant. Will anyone really care about Generation Z, or the millennials? If you care this sort of thing, Generation Z is anyone born after 2000, to the dawn of a new world defined by the effects of terrorism on America, and theorists are already suggesting that they are heavy users of technology. Time magazine may have led the push to define Generation X before anyone else could have, but that isn't to suggest that they weren't already voicing the sentiments that many of the Baby Boomers and ex hippies may have already had of us.

But wasn't Gen Y the real push behind social networking technologies and cell phone use among adolescents, wasn't Gen X, though there was little but cell phones and text based web browsers, quick to adopt computer technology as well? In fact why do we even continue to define generations through their acculturation and adoptance of technology in the first place. We keep saying that this generation isn't into material goods and we are wrong each and every time. In fact that infuriates me about the original 1990 Time article is that they thought that

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