The Pulitzers have been announced. Among the winners, the recipient of the Pulitzer for feature writing asks a thought provoking question: Would passers-by on a busy street corner recognize musical brilliance when they heard it?
Wayne
[Update: Delano's slides are available.]
Richard K. Delano, who is the Co-founder LifeCourse Associates, a generational analysis consulting and publishing firm, is presenting this morning in an IdeaFestival event in Louisville.
It's titled "Millennials Rising: Recruiting, Retaining & Marketing to 'Today's' Generation."
IF plans to do more than of these events going forward. I blogged yesterday about another such event. So stay tuned.
Richard says he's at the tail end of three straight weeks on the road. He explains that he got involved in 1992 with Scholastic Inc., to manage its custom publication operation. By way of doing some research, he read the book Generations (1991), which was a big hit with the heavyweight political set in the White House and Congress. The book is about 500 pages, but the last chapter discussed the millennial generation, something he remembered. He has continued his generational study.
All generational change is nonlinear. Stepping WAY back, he says there have been 14 generations from 1584 to 2069, grouped in fours. We're on the cusp of a "fourth turn" now.
He believes that four generational archetypes are repeated every four years - Hero, Artist, Prophet, and Nomad. The corresponding periods are High, Awakening, Unraveling and Crisis.
Boomers are born in a High period and came of age in the Awakening period, for example. Returning to the grouping of four theme, he believes that Boomers correspond to the "Civil War missionary generation." I'd love to hear more about that.
He believes that there is a very good story to tell about the Millennial generation now.
As a way of making a point on perspectives, the generations are like trains going through stations. The view is changing along the way but the perspectives might not.
More quickly now. I'll apologize in advance for not capturing everything:
G.I. generation participated in improving youth trends, particularly when it comes to education. It's a perspective that they've carried forward.
The Silent Generation ages 62 - 80 now were told to keep their heads low and were largely rewarded. One typical big concern for this group in the workplace might be about work pensions, something most people now don't even count on. They stayed in the background and remained socially conformed.
The Boomer population is actually a smaller percentage of the population than X-ers and Gen-Y. In a funny line, he says Boomers "took drugs to think outside the box, and give their kids drugs to think inside the box."
They were a generation of one worsening youth trend - SAT scores declined. Boomers famously resisted authority.
Since 1967 a poll of incoming freshmen has shown a decline in people who say developing a meaningful philosophy of life is their most important goal.
X-ers - 25 - 46 in age, take a more jaded view, in contrast. They want to get to the point. That realism is also combined with a certain pessimism toward the job they have. They are much more quick to job hop.
Gen-X parents focus on cost when it comes to what they want out of a college.
Millennials, who were born in 1982, are community focused. It sounds like the G.I. Generation of four generations ago. They are also the most diverse generation; it will be known for the assimilation of those immigrants.
The biggest divides between Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millennials are gender, race and money, respectively.
Millennial personality traits are special, sheltered, confident and team-oriented, among others traits he lists. But ironically, this generation, which will be so accomplished, may be less socially adept - something pointed out to the business owners and managers in the audience.
There is more trust in institutions and the fairness of rules. They accept peer pressure more readily.
There is a ton of data on screen that I'm not capturing as he scrolls through the Millennial data, sorry.
It's a "Harry Potter" generation - smart and educated and more oriented toward institutions than the recent past. Walt Disney, Google, Department of State, FBI and CIA are top job choices for this group. They have a very different sensitivity toward life and community. For companies, making social commitments are important to Millennials. Google exploits this by not limiting social networking on the job.
The number of passing AP exams also continues to rise among all racial groups in this generation.
But don't think that the group will think outside the box - he emphasizes that each generation has its strengths and weaknesses. It's a steady refrain.
There is, however, a huge shift from "I" to "we," something that should be applauded.
In conclusion, the generations are now spinning into the "fourth turning," where the Millennials take the country can't be predicted with accuracy. It's simply not a linear process, he cautions.
He also touches on similarities the between the generations in the U.S. and China, something I'd like to hear more about.
And with that, we're done.
Wayne
Jaron Lanier popularized the term "virtual reality" and we're all familiar with, well, reality. But is there a mixed reality?
In a post yesterday, Jennifer Ouellette describes some experimentation reported at the American Physical Society meeting this week that points to a Matrix-like mixed reality state. Get this:
[University of Illinois professor Alfred Hubler used] a real system -- in this case, a standard mechanical pendulum -- coupled with a virtual system (a virtual pendulum) that was programmed to follow the well-known equations of motion. He and his colleagues sent data about the real pendulum to the virtual one, while sending information about the virtual pendulum to a motor that influenced the motion of the real pendulum. They found that when the two pendulums were of different lengths, they remained in a "dual reality state" in which their motion was uncorrelated, and thus not synchronized....
But then they discovered that when the pendulum lengths were similar, they reached a critical transition point and became correlated, or, in Hubler's words, 'They suddenly noticed each other, synchronized their motions, and danced together indefinitely.'
...Hubler thinks his lab-induced mixed reality states could be used to better understand real complex systems with a large number of parameters, by coupling a real system to a virtual one until their constant interactions result in a mixed reality state -- for instance, modeling neurons by coupling a real neuron with a virtual one.
Being a lapsed private pilot and fan of all-things-flying, my mind went to the transition state reported by 1940's era pilots who approached the sound barrier. There was intense buffeting, poor axis control and no certainty about what might happen next.
Sounds about right.
Alfred Hubler's web site is here.
Wayne
Could the secret to human intelligence be our willingness to cooperate, to restrain the competitive instinct, to set aside societal inequality? Primatologist Brian Hare, recently named by Smithsonian Magazine as one of America's top young innovators, believes the answer may be yes.
Unlike Chimpanzees, dogs are able to infer human intentions. A dog can, for example, understanding what its owner means when she points to food or to a favorite chew toy hidden from view across the room. And as the result of some really fascinating tests he's developed, Hare believes that dogs - and bonobos, another of his subjects - have developed this ability to read intentions through cooperative strategies that minimize - or at least temporarily set aside - social hierarchies in favor of a mutual goals. Chimpanzees, which are live in strict social orders, often fail, surprisingly, to cooperate to problem solve even when there is a clear benefit for all that can be obtained by working together.
That willingness - or unwillingness - to set aside differences may have enormous consequences.
Smithsonian:
Hare and others have speculated that social and emotional skills led to the evolution of intelligence in the great apes and humans. Since the 1970's, some scientists have claimed that animals are more likely to survive and reproduce if they are able to read social cues - to keep track of what other group members are up to and to deceive them if necessary. But Hare focuses on a slightly different type of social intelligence, the ability to work with others, regardless of whether they are strangers or rank lower in the social hierarchy.
There's a lesson here for us Hare says: 'It's true humans have bigger brains and language, and so forth. But we would not have evolved the kind of intelligence we have - the kind that allows us to use our brains together, to build things, to be mentally flexible - if we hadn't had a shift in temperament....' Controlling one's fears, paying attention to others, finding joy in working with others - that's the path to intelligence, he says, whether for dogs, apes or humans.
Bringing the story forward, Yale psychologist Daniel Goleman has pioneered this understanding of emotional intelligence in his work and publications, and discusses the idea in a popular TED video that may interest you. Have a great weekend,
Wayne
What does it mean when there is one cell phone for every two people on the planet? The Washington Post reports. Hat tip: Putting People First.
Wayne
Speaking of taking full advantage of a nation's human capital, Bruce Nussbaum at BusinessWeek suggests that recipients of microloans in countries like Pakistan and Kenya, which are currently experiencing instability, are "too small to fail." Microinsurance?
Wayne
Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof, answers the question, "Why care about Darfur?" in the latest IF Conversation. You may find this video along with other archived conversations on the YouTube IFTV channel, as well as the main IdeaFestival web site.
Wayne
The New York Times "science and society" blog TierneyLab posts an update on what the prediction markets are saying about today's Super Tuesday primaries in the United States. John Tierney also provides some links to candidate science positions as well.
Wayne
How will the Internet of the developing world differ from the wired world experienced by most North Americans? This post from Internet Evolution reminded me of points made by Ethan Zuckerman last July when he talked about the "incremental infrastructure." And as Ethan has pointed out elsewhere, notwithstanding cyberutopian rhetoric, the world is not flat.
The "Internet and the Developing World" is a series with sections on telemedicine, "people power" and microfinance. It also profiles the handset-powered Internet in India and on the African continent.
Wayne
No, no, not there. Here.
Wayne
Shirin Ebadi: Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope
Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises
Jeffrey M. Schwartz: The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force
Nicholas D. Kristof: China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power
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