Forty-Somethings: Perhaps the Most Acutely Technology-Affected Generation

Dear Reader:


Right now, on NPR, Faith Middleton is hosting a show about manners and etiquette.  The topic reminds me of how luckless, or lucky, depending on how you look at it, Generation X'ers are.  Being one, I nostalgically grieve for the pre-internet world, having spent 3/4th of my life communicating face-to-face, voice-to-voice on the phone, scent-to-scent, energy-to-energy... with friends and strangers.  Now, it is mostly strangers that I share such intimacy with, in the form of service-workers, public-workers, and my fellow grocery shoppers and dog walkers.  


My family is quite small.  I have a mother and a sort of stepfather (he isn't the marrying type I've decided after 42 years of co-habitation with my mother, and his being 81) in Connecticut, one aunt and a half-brother; both live in Michigan and are not in contact with each other.  My husband is an orphan.  Our two daughters (I am remarried to their stepfather since 2000) are our whole world - our youngest is a senior this year and soon will be off to college.            


Gen-Xers like myself remember manners and etiquette because we were socialized on it. Today, I am appalled at the disregard, disrespect and often pure social-hostility of many people under 40.  I remember when movies made you think and news was not spoon-fed in little, sensational bytes.  I also appreciate the internet and how blogging has spurred my writing and made a somewhat permanent record of my existence.  Well, my anonymous existence anyway.  Blogging has also afforded me connections to people, based on common interests; I will never meet these people, but knowing that I am of a sort of tribe, however minuscule, is fascinating to me.       


More later...