Introduction - Blog
London, United Kingdom – It may or may not have been a while since you read your history books, whether in school or a good historical romance. Generation Z will indeed end up in history books one day.
Generation Z is the generation born between 1997 and 2012. It may also be considered the digital era or the first generation exposed to technology.
Growing up, I remember getting my first phone at age 10 and deciding I didn’t need it. I wasn’t all sure what it was, and I wasn’t sure I needed one. None of my other friends had one yet, and some of their parents didn’t see the point of it because we had telephones. Eventually, it was decided that we needed one for safety. It was a way to communicate and stay in touch, especially when we needed it from afar.
Then came the Blackberry, it was popular to have a phone, not just to communicate but to be in fashion. Then came the iPhone, and almost too quickly, what happened to the Blackberry? And Myspace…now Facebook? I was just playing games online.
Adult Supervision
I had that strange era, I didn’t always understand, where all the kids online posted cartoon pictures as their profile pictures. Now, Instagram is advertising its new feature of teen accounts. It’s interesting to see how the internet has tried to have our backs and how far it has developed.
Then, Twitter seemed a comfortable space for me. A place to write and focus mainly on that. Plus, everyone was sharing their thoughts and I just fit in more there.
I also experienced those sub-niche internet places, I wonder if you had them too, like Ask.fm and even YoVille could have been considered its subculture.
(Imagine this, one time I had a friend in real life and she asked me to play YoVille. Then after we played YoVille a few times, she offered to sell me a few outfits on there and I agreed. I think I had won YoVille cash or whatever it was through modelling competitions on YoVille, ( ;’)) so I was like yeah, sure, and after I sent her $7k she logged out of YoVille and didn't answer my Facebook messages. After playing YoVille as a baller, I was officially broke, and I never saw my friend in real life again. Subculture, see?)
That was around the time anyway when Facebook games stopped being cool. Perhaps she did me a favour, because then came, Instagram. Finally, the internet seemed a little more fun. There was more variety and at that age, the freedom to join in with the internet in ways I hadn’t before and show a bit more me.
I was no adult supervision, baby.
All Access
I was also into YouTube, it was popular for Vloggers, tutorials, internet personalities or listening to songs. Long gone were the days of trying to record songs through the TV to listen to them out and about. MP4 was out and then were the days for digital streaming.
Using the internet on our phones, or via mobile data was available, though not to the standard we are used to today. 4G data was released in October 2012 in the United Kingdom, Interestingly, when it was first introduced, it showed on some users phones as 3.95g, for a short time.
3G was cool, but when 4G was released, it was groundbreaking. Internet on the go had never reached those highs or speeds before.
5G, then became available in the United Kingdom in 2019, 9 few years after generation Alpha was introduced.
(Generation Alpha: 2010 to 2024, next birthed will be Generation Beta from 2025 to 2039.)
When I was younger, I was also a fan of using Tumblr. I owned a popular blog there which amassed 66,000 followers. It was an interesting experience and perhaps something I will go into more in future blog posts.
I often wonder, when the next big social media will be coming out. I wonder which sites will be popular in years to come.
I played a computer game when I was younger called ‘Civilization’. If you are unfamiliar with it, you play as a civilization leader and try to dominate the world by becoming the world leader through various strategies.
The game explores history, by following civilizations as they grow through time periods. Though the game is not entirely realistic, it sparks curiosity, what does come after the digital era?
The Digital Age
The digital era, or the digital age, overtook Y2K, beginning in the twentieth century and still continues to evolve. I also mentioned the game here because the game promotes the creation of great people, such as great art (paintings and sculptures), great music (compositions and performances) and great writing (books, plays and poems.)
Creating these great people adds culture, tourism and can win the game through a cultural victory. I thought it a nice analogy.
There are many ideas where the future might head after the digital era, for instance AI age, age of sustainability, space age 2,0 and quantum age, to name a few.
Another interesting impact to explore is the impact the digital age has had on the writing industry. It was not always so easy to become an author and since the digital era and access to reach larger audience has become increasingly available, as has the chances to become an author.
In some writing competitions, such as Story.One, in collaboration with, Thalia, specific prizes are available to be won for being an “influencer”, or someone with more than 2000 followers on Instagram.
It makes sense that you might find success in selling a book if you have a TikTok account focused in the booktok niche with over 55k followers on TikTok or something. You reach a larger audience to sell books.
If we think further into the future, where will the writing industry head next? Chat GPT is becoming more popular. Will there be a future where Generation Alpha’s bestselling author is outed for making millions off a book written from ChatGPT?
It is humorous to think, but only time can tell…
Thank you for reading my blog post this week. What are your thoughts on the future of technology?
I will be posting another bite sized lesson to The Internet Café soon. I haven’t posted a prompt for this week yet and in the chance that I miss it, I’ll make a fun suggestion.
Prompt for this week:
Time Capsule! ~~~
Write a letter for people to read in the future about what it was like to live in Y2K or the digital era.
or
Describe your predictions for the future
or
Write a story focused on time, or future.
