Why the Google Generation will not speak: the invention of digital natives

Popular cultural intellectuals have not served us well in this decade of user-generated content, blogs, podcasts, citizen journalists and Google. Indeed, while Grant McCracken critiqued Neil Postman, doubting the efficacy of ‘searing social criticism,’ he validated the work of pseudo-intellectual-journalist-experts-commentators like Stephen Johnson and soundbite phrases like ‘the long tail.’ While social criticism may not always cause change in consciousness or culture, the chances are that it is more effectively theorized than the work of those commentators currently enthused by the supposedly enabling relationship between technology and democracy.
This paper is not framed by social science, sloppy or rigorous. Neither is it aimed at preparing corporations, schools or universities with ‘managing change.’ Instead this collaborative article is a snapshot, a dialogue, and an exploration of the perils and problems of summoning an authentic voice of ‘youth,’ the ‘Google Generation’ or the ‘Digital Natives.’