My father has sent me a story. The email was called “A backpack full of memories”, the subtitle “Forward to the past”. He later told me that this project has made him happy. “You need projects, always” he said. This latest project he just sent me was a description of the first 15 years of his life, starting with his pre World War memories.
He was writing about his first 15 years while we were writing about the coming fifteen years.
Unknowingly father and son were working on the same project. I (boy on the left with the flowers) was doing research on the Post Millennial Generation. In our report, we coin these post-millennials “The Synthetic Generation”. My father (in the front of the picture) is of the Silent Generation.What we’ve discovered during our research is that the Silent and the Synthetic have a lot in common.
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So for more than a son’s interest in his fathers past, I started reading.
I hadn’t even started or I received a second email with his sequel “Now and Then”. I compiled both pieces and mirrored it with our own story on the Synthetic Generation.![](https://labs.sogeti.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/12/Memories-300x133.jpg)
The first media that broadened his world was the radio.
He mentions the distribution radio and wire broadcasting (a cable connection to the home and choice of three different channels). Distribution radio was like a mesh network. Your neighbor could connect you to their radio or gramophone by a rooftop wire. Unintendedly you could listen to the neighbors’ quarrels when the microphone was in the room. I found an old movie that explains how distribution radio works.![](https://labs.sogeti.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/12/Radio-1024x174.png)
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Distance makes people distant and with all modern technologies, people do not get closer together …….
One thing you need to know about my father is that he is an Apple junky and that he has voice-controlled his home. (And he’s hard of hearing; it drives my mother crazy when he shouts at his computer or Alexa). Still his techno-love is tempered by the idea that we are losing something. But we’re getting something in return from that same technology.![](https://labs.sogeti.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/12/Rudy-Robot.jpeg)
Never dissatisfied, never jealous, always accessible, always polite and he knows what respect is. We are going to learn a lot from the new man ….
Is he in any or many aspects like this new generation? (The big question: Does the theory stand my father’s test?) I still find it a difficult question, but if the answer was yes, I would say:- They both highly value “respect”, but they define it differently. In my father’s list, he puts respects opposite to equality. But is inclusiveness, gender equality, diversity (values of the new generations) really different from respect?
- The youngsters crave for authenticity. From the way I was raised, I can say that my father (and mother) was pretty much obsessed by the common man and how special every individual is. (But I’m pretty sure he thinks all these influencers are throwing away their lives and that you shouldn’t expose yourself like that).
- They’re serious. Unlike the Baby Boomers they are not rebellious (Trump is a Baby Boomer). They want to build. The tragedy is that they needed to build. The Silent Generation is a post-crisis generation. You can fill in the details for the future yourself.
The inconvenient truth is that in the Strauss-Howe theory the new generation is also a post-crisis generation.
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