Disappointed

I was disappointed with class today. A few people did a really good job carrying the conversation, but overall, it didn't quite work. I was surprised because I had thought that at the very least the articles on the millennials would have stimulated a lot of interest. Doesn't everyone want to read about themselves?

As a professor, my explanation for this was that people simply hadn't done the reading. After all, it's not like you 'have to.' But then someone from the class gave me another interpretation: most students are not accustomed to reading about themselves as a big demographic category. You've heard about baby boomers and gen-Xers, but this iGeneration is something different and something rather puzzling. I wonder how far that explanation goes?

Because I don't get sustenance from digitally mediated social networks (but rather from digitally mediated professional networks as well as f-2-f personal/familial networks) it's difficult for me to see what new political forms and ideas millennials are introducing. I'm skeptical, but I can be persuaded. To me it looks like entertainment, consumerism, and making fun a priority. And I worry that rather than having radically democratic and participatory implications, the actual political repercussions of networked society are highly authoritarian (my chapter in the Boler book explains why). But I would really like to see the positive dimension. I want you guys to persuade me.

As I was walking home today I tried to work out a frame for understanding millennial politics. I had in mind the concept of "social entrepreneurs" that Smith introduced in his chapter. So I thought that maybe previous generations focused on survival, political power, and then prosperity. These could be associated with large historical movements from feudalism, through the bourgeois revolutions, through the spread of capitalism. Millennials, then, wouldn't have any of these priorities; they can take survival, political power (rights to vote, free speech, run for office), and prosperity (disposal income) for granted (although this should remind us right away that this is a very narrow generational view, inapplicable to most people in the world) for granted. What is the millennial priority? Friends. Sociability. Amassing not power or money but connections with each other people. They care about these people, want to know how their lives are, what they are doing. And so they take power and money for granted.

Is this accurate?