This Blog has undergone an upgrade of both hardware and software in the last couple of months.

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I get PR materials with increasing frequency but rarely do I look at them.

But yesterday, I was charmed to discover that Warren Betts, the firm responsibile for The Day the Earth Stood Still, had decided to beam this movie, 

through space at 186,000 miles per second to a heretofore untapped possible consumer base orbiting the three star system, Alpha Centauri.

"…that the digital options available to this generation are so interesting and engaging that no one really had time to notice or care what others said of it."

Mostly this, only it's more complex than simply "digital options". A better, more complete description is that we have such fine control over our own identities that we don't need to resort to big, poorly-defined memes like generational labels. Most of the people my age that I spend time with are too busy pursuing their own American Dream to worry about what our parents call us. For my peer group, identity is constructed around personal taste (art+music+film/use of recreational time), professional (or non-professional) employment, kinds of education, and what each of us wants to accomplish in our short time here.

It's a pretty extreme hypothesis to put in a comment, but I think that we're interested in authoring our own stories and destinies. I put responsibility for this at the feet of our educational system: it tests and tests and teaches us to work for test scores, with the message that once in college, we'll figure out what we want to do with our lives. Well, the kids that went through that system are starting to go through college, and we're saying to each other that, "this system is broken, and we need to fix it".

We can't claim any responsibility for our new president's victory, but it rippled across my entire social life, reigniting a fever for self-determination among me and my friends. Our new president exemplifies the principle that here in America, if you set your mind to it, you can do anything and be anything. That's an insanely powerful image to send to a generation of youth (not to mention the whole school-debt forgiveness promise. We haven't forgotten that, and won't).

So in answer to your question, "who gets to define and design this generation?", let me establish a framework. Social networking tools let us define ourselves in a much more complex and nuanced language than English. Not to mention that we have a lot of "designing" to do to replace the broken ideals and morals of the Boomer generation.

First off, I like Ben's answer.

Second, I offer another hypothesis: Generations are dead. Thanks mainly to technology, the people I know and converse with today on a regular basis range in age from 18 – 60, but they all feel like my generation inasmuch as we share similar beliefs, interests and ideas. The idea of being associated with a group of people because we happen to be the same age seems more ridiculous than ever in the face of this truth.

It's not that I don't recognize that being born around the same time means you share a certain set of experiences that shape you, I just don't care about them that much.
At the end of the day, it's me (as a marketer) that needs a name for my generation, not me as a person/member of said generation.

It is possible we are witnessing the creation of a global self and an expansionary individualism.   The global self is curious and catholic in searching out new definitional options, credulous in trying them on, mobile in its incorporation of  diverse and improbable materials, adroit in its embrace of several at once, skillful in managing the portfolio of selves that is the result, and sturdy enough to live with the ideational and emotion turbulence that must ensue.  Most of all, it is imperial.  The global self is a presumptuous self, seeing itself as a master of its own fate, as the author of its own circumstances, as the rightful inventor of the self.  It claims all experience as its province, all definitions of the self as its domain.  The global self looks like the early modern Dutch, Spanish or English courts, taking on and using up anything in its reach.

The other day, I found myself thinking that everytime I hear Millennials described:

1.  the tone is that of a smug outsider.

2.  the speaker is not a Millennial.

Millennials don't seem to talk about themselves. They have allowed other generations to define (and design?) who they are. 

This departs from the youth culture handbook. Normally, each generation assumes the right of self authorship.  Thus did Richard Linklater and Douglas Coupland help define the alternative (or "indie") moment.  It is for other, older generations to defer.  In our culture, youth always knows better, especially one it comes to naming and claiming itself.  

Now, there may be a number of Millennials who are widely seen to be authors and architects of their generation.  (And I just know the comments field will fill with smug correction.) But let us observe that "Millennial" was created (I believe) by William Strauss and Neil Howe.  When one generation allows itself to be named by another generation, the game is up.  Even the alternatives were provided by another generation.  I believe The Net Generation was proposed by Don Tapscott.  "Generation Y" was proposed for awhile, but this was patently relation and honored that "Generation X" that had come before. 

Now, it may be that this is the Millennial difference.  They are, some of them, quite happy to embrace a status quo.  If someone wants to name them, well, this is just one of the many things they are prepared to live with.  

But we could work it the other way round.  Generations are famously and properly touchy about what they are called.  Much of the 1990s was taken up with people protesting attempts to create a name.  The point was I think that the 1990s was to be extra-categorical and anti-categorical.  The last thing Generation X wanted was a name.

Perhaps another strategy is to take anything given you without complaint, the better to escape this issue.  Perhaps Millennials are living under the deep cover of the term called Millenial.  

There are lots of other possible explanation: that this generation is too various for generalizations or labels too apply, that the digital options available to this generation are so interesting and engaging that no one really had time to notice or care what others said of it.  

But I have to say, there is something odd here.

References

Wikipedia has a guite good review of the topic here.

Much of the work of anthropology is observing how a community creates roles and relationships. Somewhat optimistically, we call this social organization.

One of the challenges of contemporary culture is how many roles and potential relationships there now are.  

Last night on the NBC show called Life, there was a wonderful dinner scene that gives us a glimpse of … us. 

Thanks to an introduction from Debbie Millman, I got to have lunch today with Josh Liberson. Josh is the cofounder of Helicopter.  (For more on Helicopter, see the paragraph below, courtesty of Debbie's post on Air American.)

Jon Fine is one of the aces of contemporary journalism. He writes the Medic Centric column for BusinessWeek. He grasps culture.  He grasps commerce.  He has made himself a careful student on the extraordinary changes now upon us.  

A digitized world has crushed the music industry and is now crushing just about every other medium, too. But at least when it comes to the hearts and dollars of advertisers, TV remains the tallest tree in the forest. Like a semi-bright child fixated on one idea, I wandered the mid-May upfronts week and buttonholed everyone I could with variations on a single question: When do falling ratings finally make advertisers flee? That is, at what point does all of this—insert a gesture toward a glitzy onstage spectacle or a crowded, hangar-sized party space—end? The unanimous answer: Some day. Just not now. 

Fine, Jon. 2008. Don't Touch That Dial. Businessweek. June 2, 2008, p. 90.