by L K. J

Created on: February 11, 2008

"... underemployed, overeducated, intensely private and unpredictable". This is the banal description of ' Generation X' as written by author Douglas Coupland when he unwittingly stereotyped an entire generation in his fictional novel of the same heading back in 1991.

This is the most stereotyped and under appreciated generation in recent history. Who are they? Here's an eyeopening representative summary:

Larry Page- founder of Google, Tom Anderson the founder of MySpace, Chad Hurley- founder of YouTube, Senator Barack Obama- 2008 Democratic party presidential hopeful, Jerry Yang and David Filo- founders of Yahoo!, Michael Dell- founder of Dell computers Inc.

" Lazy," " passive" and " possessing only a hazy sense of their own identity"? After such an impressive roll of innovators and progressive thinkers, surely not!

In a broad sense Generation X stands for those born between 1961 and 1981. This genealogical demarcation has never really been clearly defined since the definition is widely used in different sociological niches with no apparent authority on the subject.

According to a feature article in Time magazine in 1990, X-ers were born during a period when the U.S. birthrate decreased to half the level of its post Second World war peak. This promoted the labeling ' the baby busters' or ' generation insignificant' or simply ' x' ; an unsung generation, hardly recognized as a social force or even noticed much at all.

Often referred to as the ' lost generation' or the ' forgotten generation', X-ers have long endured vehement socio-cultural stereotyping, plastering them as apathetic slackers whose frustration, hopelessness and cynicism drives them to spend the better part of their day lurking in malls and whining of what could have been.

The media's view of X-ers is a generation of disaffected suburbia-bred middle class kids whose college education does them no good in a boomer- bloated labor market.

This unfortunate labeling seems to have been fueled by the overly-cautious post-depression era baby boomers who, in the late 70s and early 80s, were having to move over and create room for a new generation in industry, social-economic and political standing.

What are some generic characteristics of Generation X-ers?

Being mostly college educated post-Vietnam war professionals, they hold a distinctly different world view on many issues, a quality that probably fuels the disfavor they experience from other generations.

Unlike their baby boomer parentage, they do not believe

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