Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Why the "Worgen Generation?" Part 2 of 3

Today continues my discussion for calling ourselves the "Worgen Generation". Part 3 will come Friday.

2.) The use of worgen also reflects how we communicate with each other. To my knowledge, our generation is the first to make such extensive use of online communication. That can be done in the game of WoW, obviously, but we also make use of text-messaging, Facebook, and tweeting. We are the first to live, play and communicate in these virtual environments. I know there are concerns that by being in the virtual world so much, we are losing interpersonal skills, but I say that this does not have to be the case.

We have seen in recent weeks what technological interpersonal communication can do by the recent protests in the Middle East to help organize and protest the various countries' leaders. But this had been done a couple of years back in Iran and after that in the Tea Party movement in this country. We had utilized our technological skills to good use, and thwarted "the powers that be" by being in communication with each other beyond their control. They can, of course, cut off cellphone and Internet usage, but we had already lit the fuse of uprising by that point and have already created alternate forms of communications by that time.

In fact, compare our technological form of protest with the forms of “protest” the Baby Boomers used - that is, “sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll” – and see which had a more substantial and instantaneous effect. While our parents “tuned in, turned on, and dropped out”, our generation is toppling leaders – even leaders that have been established for decades. Leave the boomers with their drug-addled brains, venereal disease, dusty LPs, and “misty water-colored memories” of the way they were; we’ll take our technology and the societal changes that we can actually see taking place in front of our eyes, thank-you-very-much!

It's important to think of that: We had bypassed the usual methods the "powers that be" of controlling the message and content by being in contact with each other in these very personal and yet very open methods. In the past, a person of power who wanted to control the message would dump loads of money to various message outlets like the media. Now, however, we can be tweeting with each other in a matter of literally seconds, and we will have already spread our message to each other long before the person in question even knows what we've said.

In a sense, you can even say that we have our own language with "textspeak". For instance, most of my generation knows what this means virtually instantaneously: OMG! CYBI? IWL, AYS? LOL! I'm sure that most of you older folks can eventually figure out what I said, but I bet it took you a lot longer than the folks my age. The benefit of textspeak is that we can translate it faster than you can even if you happen to intercept our messages.

It can be said, really, that each generation speaks its own "language" that the previous generation doesn't understand, so why should we be any different? The benefit of being so adept at interpersonal technological communication is that we are readily available for each other - literally just a Tweet away! We can be in touch instantaneously with a lot more of our friends faster than you can be in touch with yours even your speed-dial! :-D

In closing, let me say that: All your communication base are belong to us! >:-)

On Friday, I will discuss the last point of suggesting the "Worgen Generation". See you then!

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