As is the usual for many other twenty-something college students, much of my creative inspiration can be attributed to the profound and interesting statements of my drunk friends.
Recently, while he sophisticatedly sipped his sixth glass of whiskey, one of my friends began to explain how our generation is going to be remembered and, more specifically, how we’ll be differentiated from our parents’ generation.
“You know, Chance, our parents are just the television generation, but we’ll be the generation of the Internet,” he slurred. In this situation, I typically ignore stories like these, as they’re often just drunk rants, but my friend was onto: The Internet (and greater technology in general) has caused quite the generation gap, and we’re only beginning to understand the implications.
Take the entertainment industry, for example. Like many other college students, I’ve made the decision to waive cable television and have instead opted to steal my friend’s sign up for a Netflix account. I have access to many of my favorite television series and movies. The problem, of course, was that you would be late in the game, as a series would only arrive on Netflix once the season was through on cable. As time goes on, however, this will no longer be the case. Netflix has begun offering their own originals such as “House of Cards” and, my current favorite, “Orange is the New Black.” And contrary to the once-a-week airing of cable TV, Netflix has released the first season of both of these titles all at once. All of the episodes are immediately available for the viewer to watch on demand and at their own convenience.
On the new distribution style, Kevin Spacey, who starred in Netflix’s “House of Cards,” had this to say: “It’s a real opportunity for the film and television industry to learn the lesson the music industry didn’t learn. Give the audience what they want, when they want it, in the form they want it in, at a reasonable price, and they’ll buy it.” Years from now, it will seem archaic that viewers actually planned their lives around television programming rather than the viewers dictating their own schedule. Wired Magazine has already gone so far as to refer to it as the Platinum Age of Television.
Once one also considers services like Spotify, which allow instant streaming of a virtually limitless library of music, it quickly becomes evident that we’re entering into an important period for entertainment as a whole.
It doesn’t stop there. Skype video calls, for example, were once fictions of the imagination, something that belonged in an episode of “Star Trek” rather than on our personal computers and handheld devices. And while many people have used it to connect with family members back home, friends on vacation, or a significant other, many have used these technologies in unprecedented ways.
Dissenters have employed video streaming to film their protests for the world while whistle-blowers have used it to uncover scandals in our nation’s military for increased transparency.
Whether you’re Skyping with your boyfriend from vacation, petitioning your government, or video recording your drunken friend’s rants, technology is revolutionizing all of it.
