A call to my generation
This past weekend was my birthday. I was born in 1969, the early cohort of Generation X. Until a few years ago—specifically ten years ago—I gloried in my generation. The culture in which we live was created by us. Hip hop. Electronica. The internet. We popularized them and made them conquer the world. Forget the Baby Boom: we were the generation of the future. We created the future. We watched Star Trek and imagined a future in the stars. My generation had a freedom which earlier generations, and the succeeding ones, could not have imagined. We were the latch-key generation. Our parents were working, and we were on our own. We were so feral that at 10pm, local TV stations would come on with announcements asking our parents if they knew where we were. When I turned 14, my parents let me loose. Within limits, of course; we were an immigrant family, not an American family, so I was more cosseted than Americans. But summer days I would spend all day outside of the ho...
