Generational Gaps

You would think having two baby boomer parents would have given me a bit of a heads up on the divide between boomers and their kids, but it wasn’t until this research trip that I understood the full extent of the situation at hand, that the mindset of boomers and gen-Xers are vastly different. The organization of thoughts, the seeking of information, the enthusiasm or lack thereof for a collective mind…its an incredible difference.

Allow me to elaborate. One night in the RV, Maren and i are blogging, and as i finish i direct her to the link so she can have a glance. “Good. You need to capitalize your ‘i’s” I stared at Maren in disbelief. Do i really need to capitalize them? Why? What purpose, other than being grammatically correct, does that extra keystroke serve? Sure I could spend a minute going back and capitalizing my ‘i’s, but why would i go back when i could write another sentence and add a new idea to my post? I did go back and capitalize my ‘i’s, but that was a one time deal. though, i am consciously struggling with what grammatical rules i should follow and what to set aside, though avoiding extra keystrokes is a plus. Why not streamline your words? What is it that we are sacrificing if our message is still able to make it out, free of some general structures? Is it really that derailing if i didn’t just use an apostrophe? Periods, commas, question marks, those markings help communicate ideas and pace them in an understandable format. However, grammar for grammar’s sake is a dated idea.

It was possibly the same night that Maren handed me a draft of her newsletter for me to glance over, and the first thing i notice is that she capitalized internet. I looked at her for a moment and asked, “Do we capitalize internet?” “Well, yeah. its the Internet.” Why capitalize internet? The internet is less of a “place” than it is a means of establishing a collective thought. I don’t capitalize the “c” in “car” for the same reason i don’t capitalize internet. The internet is a tool. It is a vehicle to explore the ideas of others. When you capitalize internet, you separate it from yourself in almost a sacred way. The only reason you capitalize anything is to honor it as something sacred, something holy, and perhaps something even slightly distant. While the idea of a collective global mind is indeed something to behold, its not a place, its its a medium. Think about it. when language was first being transcribed into tablets, sheets, books, etc,  i’m sure it was recognized as something of importance, but i’m also sure that they weren’t capitalizing.  Apostrophes and capitalizations do not change the meaning of the message. They indicate a level of understanding in regards to language and grammar, almost a status marker. However, in the “we” world, it’s not about status through understanding of language, its through the understanding of ideas we are sharing.