The technological path of a “Xennial”???

Being born in 1978 means our generation went on quite the wild ride of technological discovery as we were growing up!

We fit that generation of people who don’t know if they are Generation X or Generation Y. We’ve rubbed shoulders with the Baby boomers and the Millennials… I guess it has placed us in a unique time-line as far as experimentation with technology is concerned.

For instance, despite growing up in a relatively analogue world, technology soon stormed into our lives.

As Video Cassette Tapes invaded the living rooms of the western world in the late 70s and early 80s, we were the ones who were asked by mum and dad (or the neighbours) to tune the VCR to the TV so they could change channels through the VCR player. These kind of requests likely came after sunset, the universal home-time for kids, as we would play in the yard or street or park until dusk. But technology was creeping in… for one, we lived to see the Video shop industry go from VCR to DVD and then to little kiosks in shopping centres and on street corners.

We saw the populism of the Commodore 64 and later played Amiga 500s with our friends after school. Apple Macintosh Computers followed us into Primary school. We were the ones who played “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” in technology classes and later in High School the Encarta CD-ROM blew our minds… To be honest, when I first fired up the Encarta CD-ROM with my classmates as young 13 or 14 year olds we were very, very impressed with the embedded videos, music, and clickable links… I mean even the intro was something we had never imagined!!! Of course, prior to those years, the pride and joy of a household bookshelf was a recent collection of leather-bound or hard cover Encyclopedia Britannica.

Along the journey we also saw the development of video game consoles as they went from cartridges, to disc and now to online gaming and/or vitual reality and motion-sensitive gaming. Our pre-teen generation coincided with the release of the Atari video games consoles; this means that the Xennials have been in for the entire journey of the “1st to the 8th” generation of consoles; yet we still played classic arcade games like Space Invaders or Pac-man or pinball with our uncles and aunties or older siblings!

If video games weren’t your thing and you were into music, then I’m sure fellow “Xennials” remember making mixed cassette tapes and playing them on Walkmans which later turned to portable CD players (Discman) in high school and then MP3s and I-pods later when we were at university and in adulthood!

The Xennials have been counted by some as a micro-generation. Dan Woodman, an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne seemed to have some influence on the term’s popularity. His article touches on other aspects of a Xennial’s place in the grand scheme of generational momentum and shift (such as how we think, act and talk) but technology and it’s use (or non-use) appears in his article too i.e. using technology to date, the emergence of mobile phones in our teenage years (Woodman, 2017).

It all makes for a nice little trip down memory lane, yet upon reflection it really was a wild ride of technological discovery wasn’t it? I personally am happy where I came on in in the stream of time.

Are you a Xennial? Do you have any more generational technological changes/memories that come to mind? I would love to hear them?

For those of you who want a blast from the past!

Reference:

Woodman, D. (2017, July 12). From Boomer to Xennials: we love talking about our generations but we must know their limits. Retrieved from http://theconversation.com/from-boomers-to-xennials-we-love-talking-about-our-generations-but-must-recognise-their-limits-80679

Photo by Tomasz Filipek from Pexels