Remembering the "good old days" is part of the human condition. It's easy, sometimes, to tire of kid's constant attachment to devices, to get sick of sitting in silence as friends connect to something as banal as a plastic screen. But while we might pine for the way things were, and occasionally feel like the village luddite, we should at the same time be grateful. We are the last generations to know what it was like to be absent, unconnected and alone.
As the last generation to know life without technology, we have a great deal to share.
Aloneness is the enemy of our technology epoch.
Connectivity is king; to be switched off, shut off, and left in silence with your interior world is unthinkable. But Baby Boomers and Gen Xers know what it's like to be by ourselves. To have thinking space, complete silence, uninterrupted by the bleep of new messages or WhatsApp notifications. To be unreachable.
Author Michael Harris argues the case for such aloneness his books The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection and Solitude: In pursuit of a singular life in a crowded world. In these much-lauded tomes, he puts forward the argument that we need to re-examine our relationship with technology and embrace the joys of alone time.
"As we embrace a technology's gifts, we usually fail to consider what they ask from us in return—the subtle, hardly noticeable payments we make in exchange for their marvellous service," he says in The End of Absence.
"We don't notice, for example, that the gaps in our schedules have disappeared because we're too busy delighting in the amusements that fill them. We forget the games that childhood boredom forged because boredom itself has been outlawed."
Harris clearly elucidates the relationship between solitude and boredom. And if aloneness is the enemy of the digital age, boredom (as he puts it) is an outlaw. Who has time to be bored, when the world is at your fingertips and you're in touch with everyone, all the time?
Boredom was part and parcel of growing up pre-internet. You'd come home from school, throw your bag on the bed, and be bored.
After-school TV was the only entertainment us Gen Xers could switch on to; Boomers had books and radio. But the boredom that space and aloneness offered us was exquisite in its own way. It gave us time to develop our inner world, to explore interiors that cannot be deeply traversed when you're constantly connected.
In Solitude Harris shares the story of Dr Edith Bone, a woman who was kept prisoner for seven years in Communist-era Hungary. Instead of being broken by the experience, she came "a little wiser and full of hope".
Her extreme solitude was made bearable by a rich interior life; she translated poetry in her mind, mentally revisited cities she had visited, made letters and beads out of old bread and worked out problems and calculations. Silence, solitude and lack of connection can be beautiful, if we nurture our interior world as well as we do our Facebook account.
When it comes to working life, those of us who bridge the technological divide also have certain advantages.
Baby Boomers in leadership roles had to rely on their ability to tell compelling stories around workplace performance, to travel and bring back experiences of other environments and use this knowledge to inform their own staff around how things are done elsewhere.
Gen Xers understand the ways in which Baby Boomers work, but bring an anti-authoritarian, socially progressive understanding to the workplace and are able to effectively bridge the gap between Boomers and Millennials.
The experiences of Baby Boomer leaders may not impress those who have always had access to the wider world via the internet, their years of experience in "real world" environments is invaluable. Successful interpersonal relationships in real life can't be taught by Doctor Google, and those who've spent most of their time in the here and now (as opposed to online) have a lot to teach.
While some of us may feel blindsided by technology, and worry for the future generations as they navigate a world in which technology is as ubiquitous as the air they breathe, we may be better advised to look at the opportunities we have to educate "tech natives" on the wonders of the world outside the screen.
Passing on the joys of nature, sharing the wonders that can be found in between the pages of a book. Encouraging conversations with people in person, attending concerts, playing with animals.
Helping them to rejoice in the here and now, as boring as it can sometimes be.
As the last generation to know life without technology, we have a great deal to share. One day we will be seen as almost mythological creatures; living in a world that didn't know everything, all the time.
We should rejoice in our status — we straddle epochs and we can draw on our experiences of the past to help the younger generations navigate and nurture their own inner lives in the technology-fuelled future.
