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The Go-Nowhere Generation

nytimes.com

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Re: The Go-Nowhere Generation

#31

Post by etherael »

sheraz wrote: post #15
johnnyg wrote: post #8

What an out of touch dude. I'm not sure he gets that the wealth is being created by our minds instead of our backs. I wonder if he could code anything he used to send or publish that article - or even if he understands even the absolute basics of how that series of tubes works. I doubt it. If we're renaming generations, perhaps we can rename his the "You've Lead America Off a Cliff And Stiffed Your Children With The…

I think it is important to note that author is speaking in broad, generational terms. The HN community is definitely not representative of Gen-Y. I know many 20 and 30-somethings to whom the internet is a series of tubes. Though the author might have had an old-fogey tone he does bring some interesting points to light: 1. why do young people in auto-centric cities hold off on getting a car? 2. why are young people no…

1 Maybe they don't want to submit to draconian licensing restrictions which have trended politically toward the ridiculous and punitive under the guise of increasing road safety all whilst seniors losing their sense of sight continue to get involved in serious accidents on a regular basis? Not to mention the environmental / financial issues implicit in car ownership.

2. Maybe they don't see a need to migrate to places where physical presence is necessary to undertake these jobs when location independent work is a rising tide? (Thus further negating the entire point of having a car and / or submitting to the prior mentioned procedures from point 1?)

Speaking for myself those are the reasons I don't submit to the whole car culture thing and the reason I don't choose a location to live based on employment / economic factors, but then I'm 32, so I acknowledge I'm not generation Y. It stands to reason though that there are some people in that generation proceeding on the same basis as I am.

Boomers criticising any generation for not wanting to play the game strikes me as utterly hilarious. Especially from a guy with a book titled "Why you need and love the rat race". It's self parody at its finest.

Re: The Go-Nowhere Generation

#32

Post by pyre »

funkah wrote: post #17

This generational griping ignores the difficulty the current generation of young people face. The country they inherited is not the bountiful one the authors' generation did. I say this as a recently-young person who has moved across the country.

  > I say this as a recently-young person who has
  > moved across the country.
If you didn't move to North Dakota, you've proved the author's point!

Re: The Go-Nowhere Generation

#33

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

As an engineer in Europe I'm working less and less outside. Today we can control an industrial plant from our main company using Internet.

We predict problems before they ever arrive using telemetry monitoring and we could fix 95% of the problems with keystrokes.

Re: The Go-Nowhere Generation

#34

Post by _delirium »

sheraz wrote: post #15
johnnyg wrote: post #8

What an out of touch dude. I'm not sure he gets that the wealth is being created by our minds instead of our backs. I wonder if he could code anything he used to send or publish that article - or even if he understands even the absolute basics of how that series of tubes works. I doubt it. If we're renaming generations, perhaps we can rename his the "You've Lead America Off a Cliff And Stiffed Your Children With The…

I think it is important to note that author is speaking in broad, generational terms. The HN community is definitely not representative of Gen-Y. I know many 20 and 30-somethings to whom the internet is a series of tubes. Though the author might have had an old-fogey tone he does bring some interesting points to light: 1. why do young people in auto-centric cities hold off on getting a car? 2. why are young people no…

On #1, I'd guess one factor is that the car isn't as big a part of teenage social life as it used to be. In much of the U.S., cars were central to high-school social life, with who had cars counting for a considerable amount of social status, and a lot of hanging-out activities (malls, movie theaters, arcades, etc.) requiring cars to get to. It's possible that also had advantageous effects for being able to get to jobs, but teenagers weren't mainly getting their licenses for those reasons. My read is that hanging out at the mall doesn't have the same role in high-school social life of the 2010s as it did in the 1980s.

Re: The Go-Nowhere Generation

#35

Post by organico »

While the article is a bit lacking, in my own observations traveling extensively around the globe, I encountered very few Americans, considering their population numbers, wealth, etc. I realise the article is more about interstate travel for work, etc, however it always just really surprised me about how few young American kids were out there bumming it around the world with backpacks on. I met more Israelis out there than North Americans, and they have a population of what, 6 million? Or Australians? Those guys are everywhere.

Re: The Go-Nowhere Generation

#37

Post by sebphfx »

rblion wrote: post #20

the author isn't aware that social revolutions are caused by hunger. "The Rape and Pillage the Planet For Every Last Drop of Oil" generation "The Gained the World, Lost their Soul" generation "The Numbers and Dollars, not Humans and Values" generation we are "Wish for the best, prepare for the worst" generation

the "wearing pyjama pants to go to school" generation. the "my pants are so low,I look like I shit my pants" generation.

Re: The Go-Nowhere Generation

#38

Post by tomjen3 »

poink wrote: post #21

This is silly. The vast majority of yesteryear's kids didn't want to go anywhere, either. The Lost Generation were the youth of WW1. The Greatest Generation were the youth of WW2. More young people in the 60's went to Vietnam than have ever joined the Peace Corps. This entire article is essentially whining that we no longer have a draft.

And, ironically, the reason the US no longer has a draft is that his generation went nuts over Vietnam. Everybody knows that it is political suicide to institute a draft.

Re: The Go-Nowhere Generation

#39

Post by nomaningme »

"For about $200, young Nevadans who face a statewide 13 percent jobless rate can hop a Greyhound bus to North Dakota, where they’ll find a welcome sign and a 3.3 percent rate. Why are young people not crossing borders?"

This is so stupid. Read any story about the ND oil field boom and all they can talk about is these little towns that have quintupled in size, where ND license plates are outnumbered on the streets 25:1.

Re: The Go-Nowhere Generation

#40

Post by wilschroter »

I'm not sure how every aging generation is suddenly surprised that a previous generation is different in some way.

It seems ridiculous to assume that with all the major changes that have happened over the last 20 years that people wouldn't have different behaviors.

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