I was invited to participate in an interview at the museum where my wife is working. In this session, a consultant was collecting information to inform recommendations on future interpretive programs. As an interpreter I was very interested in his methods as well as his recommendations.
However it was the comment of another participant that caught my attention. This participant identified herself as a Millennial, claiming she was very much in tune with her generation. She expressed her annoyance at the Museum for not catering to her generation. As an example of how out of touch they were she cited the lack of a mechanism to make donations by credit card from her phone. She claimed that no one in her generation was going to write a check to any organization, EVER.
My unspoken reaction was: how incredibly shallow. Apparently she fails to find, and assumes that nobody else of her age finds, any cause to be worthy enough to get out of her comfort zone. Even something so trivial as writing a check in support of a cause you truly value.
In the same breath my reaction was: so buddy, what of you? What are the two most significant accomplishments of your generation? What put you out of your comfort zone? Although I hadn’t given this much thought, my answers were nearly immediate.
In my opinion the most far reaching and significant accomplishment of my generation was correcting the environmental excesses of previous generations. I came of age in the 1970’s, during that time there was a fundamental change in attitude that saw grass roots efforts to curb air and water pollution.
One personal motivating factor was the Cuyahoga river fires. As a child my family lived in southern Michigan. One of my Aunts lived in Cleveland not far from the river. On a visit to my cousin’s home I remember going down to the river at night to watch spurts of blue flame erupt from the water. At the time I thought it rather cool, who would guess that a river could belch fire? But thinking about it afterwards, it is easy to imagine just how serious a threat this represented. I claim no part in correcting this, by the major fire in 1969 we had moved west. But seeing it firsthand has colored my thoughts on the importance of clean water.
When my wife and I purchased our home in Los Gatos, California we enjoyed walking the Los Gatos Creek trail. Sadly, at the time it was covered in trash.
As we walked to Lexington Reservoir for the first time we talked about how much the garbage detracted from our enjoyment. Here was a gravel trail through the beautiful oak woodlands of central California and it was literally trashed.
On our return trip we found and filled four plastic grocery bags with trash and carried them out. I remember walking along picking up cans and cups and being thanked by passing trail hikers. In spite of the embarrassing attention, we cheerfully accepted their thanks.
On our next trip we brought along our own big black plastic trash bags. These being much larger we were only able to fill and carry one each. We were again thanked by other users of the trail.
By the third trip the amount of trash was significantly reduced and we witnessed other folks with their own plastic bags. We greeted and thanked them as we had been thanked.
After that, the amount of trash along the trail never detracted from the pleasure of our walk. Sure, we would find and pick up the occasional paper cup or candy wrapper, but we were never again able to fill a plastic bag. And this continued for the rest of the time we lived in town. The community took care of keeping the area clean. Nobody had to pass a law or raise awareness, it just happened. Those who saw the importance did something about it. Those who didn’t, well they didn’t. I’m proud to have had a very minor part in making that change.
Another generational accomplishment in which I participated, was the rise of the semiconductor. We lived in Los Gatos because I was a principal in an electronics company (actually a series of companies) building custom logic chips. On one project, I was a member of the first team to put the logic for the IBM PC on a single chip. The chip was to be used in an NEC (Nippon Electric Corporation) hand held computer. It would allow NEC’s engineers to reduce the size of the machine from the desktop filling monsters of the time to the size of a thick checkbook. I was pretty excited at the challenge, since the PC was only a few years old and Intel had just released the logic diagrams for their chip. The project was a real bear, nothing went well, but after a few false starts we succeeded in building the device.
Over the ensuing decades I’ve lost my photo of the computer, but here is a future incarnation of it.
Here is NEC’s announcement of this more advanced version.
Our version was eventually cancelled because it didn’t sell very well. Judging by this announcement it was about eight years ahead of its time. It didn’t serve the market very well. Device data storage was minimal and the internet wasn’t around to connect it to other resources. But it laid the ground work for the hand held devices of today. Even though it was very minor role, I’m proud to have had a part in advancing the art and science.
I’ll not get all Pollyanna about my cohort, I recognize there have been some significant generational failures along the way—perhaps sometime we’ll explore them.
What do you see as the most significant accomplishments of your generation? How have you personally participated in them? Did they put you out of your comfort zone? Meaningful change always requires adaptation that’s rarely comfortable. It’s up to you to be the agent of that change.