Looking back on generations
The naming of generations and the characterisations attributed to them came to prominence with the baby boomers who were a clearly defined by the babies that were born when soldiers returned from World War II and started to rebuild their lives.
Leaders such as Hitler, born 1889, Mussolini, born 1883, Stalin, born 1878 and Mao, born 1893, were young men during the privations of World War I and then used the huge civil unrest of the depression to start a nationalist movement in their country, to take power and start a new war to right the wrongs of the past.
The generation that was labelled the “Greatest Generation” describes those people born in the period between 1901 and 1924 and these would have lived through the aftermath of World War I and the Great Depression of 1929 to 1939.
In the UK they lost 20 per cent of men of marriageable age which meant 20 per cent cent of women would never find a partner. This scenario would have applied to most of Europe and New Zealand, and many of the returning soldiers would have been deeply traumatised.
A person born in 1918 would have lived through the aftermath of the war, then the Great Depression and then would have been 21 when he was sent to war in 1939 and only 26 when he returned from the war.
No wonder he overthrew the old order and voted for a more socialist government, but this time using democracy rather than revolution.
The baby boomers were still at school when the world really began to recover from World War II and the damage to infrastructure had mostly been rebuilt.
The boomers had free education and healthcare and, during their development years, motor transport had a massive expansion and drop in price. There was adequate housing for everyone and the availability of air travel exploded and with it, overseas holidays. Television was available to all and the first man went to the moon.
In the overlap between the war babies and the boomers there were the hippies which was a freedom movement opposed to the Vietnam War and wanted less regulation and more openness.
The next defining generation were the millennials who were born from 1981 to 1996. These were the first to have computers and mobile phones during their formative years.
The Apple Mackintosh came on the market in 1984, Microsoft Windows in 1985, the Nokia mobile phone was mid 1990s, so that as the millennials were growing up there was always a newer and fast computer or phone system to buy.
Google started in 1998, Wi-Fi in
1997 and fibre optics installed in the mid-2010s and this is when the spread of knowledge and information really started to change the world.
In my view we are just entering a new and exciting age and the combination of computer technology, climate change, eight billion people and the conversion from fossil fuels to electrical energy will be lifechanging.