Passing The Torch

“The next generation”, “passing the torch,” it has seemed that we have heard it all before. But this week I embraced the contextual filter of generational shift and everything has become clearer.

I am not a Gen X’er or a Gen Y’er, or a “tweener”; technically I am a boomer born in the diminishing tail of that curve. I have watched “slackers,” and “grungers” and seen MTV repeatedly “rock the vote.” It is easy to be a little jaded toward “the rise of the next generation”.

Now the generational shift is for real. Don Tapscott calls them the Net-Gen and there are as many of them as baby boomers. The shift is as profound as that to the “greatest generation” which was shaped by the great depression, WWII and the Marshal plan; and the “baby boomers” who were molded by civil rights, Viet Nam and the Cold War.

This generation gets to deal with the energy transition, climate change, the rise of a global middle class, the decline of US global dominance, etc. Looking at the election, government, policy, and global economics through this filter is very valuable.