Is the generation gap keeping up with the times as well?
Only a couple of shopping days left, and many of us parents have a problem. It is not that we are not sure we want to buy the things on the wish list. We have nothing against Bop It Extreme 2, Star Wars Galaxies or even - if we are truly laisser faire - Halo: Combat Evolved.
What concerns us is the incomprehensibility (Bop It) and, more important, the interactivity of the games. When we buy interactive games, we might as well be buying children private spaceships, or aircraft tickets dated December 25. Aircraft tickets away from us.
Every generation shuts its elders out with technology. Our own generation shut our parents out with Christmas day television, telephones and the Walkman. Our parents shut theirs out with the radio. But today’s young are the first to manage that feat so early and so thoroughly. By the age of 10, they have already found a new community through gaming or “IM” - instant messaging. This trend cuts short childhood - a pain much discussed. But it cuts short parenthood as well.
My own thesis is that there is a new generation gap that we all will have to get used to. The phrase “digital divide” does not quite capture it. The gap has to do with the old grammarians’ principles of convention - what was correct in the past - and usage - what is popular now. People born before 1975 are people of convention - mostly, the convention of the word. They like books. They like music - often because of the lyrics. And yes, they like computers: computers are a cool new way to play around with words.
To these people, Google’s plan to digitise the contents of the world’s best libraries sounds like the best Christmas gift of all. Through Google, after all, we can all learn more about our ancestors’ conventions.
People born after 1975 are, however, people of usage. They do whatever the current culture is doing, and much of that involves pictures, not words. They do not mind books - but some of their favourite “insta-books” are written along the plot lines of action movies that have already been produced. And they like computers - mostly because those computers offer a chance to stage a Wookiee rebellion against the Empire.
To be sure, there are exceptions. Harry Potter is all about convention and words. Star Wars Galaxies, the game, is about images, but it also is about traditional characters worthy of Chaucer. Still, the fading of the conventional culture is a genuine thing, as the National Endowment for the Arts has documented. According to a study titled “Reading at Risk”, four out of 10 college-aged people say they read novels, short stories, poetry or plays (a class that includes Harry Potter) on a regular basis. In 1982, by contrast, six out of 10 in this group read literature. What is more, literary reading among the young is dropping at an accelerating rate.
It is difficult for the generation of Greenham Common - not to mention that of The Rocky Horror Picture Show - to admit that we are conventional. After all, we are the original rebels.
Still, many of our generational differences were, in fact, minor.
The older generation quoted their parents quoting Tennyson. The younger one quoted The Greening of America.The older generation tried to use correct grammar. The younger generation tried less hard. But it still tried. One of the smallest but commonest battles of the 1960s and 1970s was the age-old one over word order and prepositions. If you wanted to be an attorney or a teacher you had to learn to avoid putting your preposition at the end of your sentence. “To whom do you talk?”, not “Who do you talk to?”
Nonetheless, revolt in those days was a phase. For most of us in the pre-1975 crowd - with the exceptions of the heroin addicts and the Maoists - knew that convention was there in the background, waiting for the day we would go to work. There we might never use slide rules, but we would still, for the most part, be operating in our parents’ culture.
The younger generation, by contrast, partakes of a revolution that is closer to permanent. They believe that the majority of the tools of their predecessors are forever outmoded. They assume the end of the use of the pen (penmanship being already dead), the death of the old watch, the demise of the book, the encyclopedia, the index, and, yes, the non-virtual library.
What makes us older types anxious is that we know these assessments are probably correct. We see, too, that our children derive great satisfaction from their new communities - even though those communities are not part of our conventions. Usage rules.
Still, some of us old rebels are still feisty, and perpetually - especially in holiday weeks - contemplate measures to keep our children with us, culturally and physically. We can, after all, limit computer hours. We can limit computers. We can cloister our children in traditional summer camps that ban even digital cameras. We may have to cast our children pretty far back - a quarter of a millennium, say, into cello lessons and Latinity - but at least we will be creating adults we can understand.
But let us face it: generational changes are hard to prevent, and these last steps would be selfish and cruel. For by their 30s or 40s, we would be gone. And then, who would they talk to?
“代沟”也与时俱进？
购物的日子只剩两三天了，我们这些身为父母的人中，很多人碰到了问题。并不是说，我们不确定是否要买希望清单上的东西。对于电子游戏《Bop It Extreme 2》、《星球大战》(Star Wars Galaxies) ，我们没什么意见。如果我们真的随便一点，甚至连《光晕：战斗进化》(Halo: Combat Evolved)也能接受。
让我们担心的是游戏的无法理解之处（比如Bop it），更重要的是，我们担心这些游戏的互动性。当我们购买互动游戏时，我们可能就在购买孩子的私人太空船，或者出发日期为12月25日的机票。让他们离开我们的机票。
每一代人都用科技把老一代人排除在外。我们自己这代人用圣诞节电视、电话和随身听(Walkman)把我们的父母排除在外。我们的父母用收音机把他们父母排除在外。但现在的年轻人，是能够在如此小的年龄如此彻底地做到这一点的第一代人。在10岁的时候，他们已经通过玩游戏或“IM”（即时短信）找到了一个新群体。这股潮流缩短了童年，这是一种人们讨论很多的痛苦。但这股潮流也缩短了为人父母的时期。
我自己的看法是，存在一条我们所有人都必须习惯的新代沟。“数字鸿沟”一词不能完全表达其含义。这条代沟与文法家的传统原则（过去正确的传统）和现在流行的习惯原则相关。1975年之前出生的人是传统人群，主要是文字传统。他们喜欢书籍。他们喜欢音乐（通常因为喜欢歌词）。是的，他们也喜欢电脑，因为电脑是个酷酷的、玩弄文字的新途径。
对这些人来说，Google有个听上去最好的圣诞礼物：把全球顶尖图书馆的藏书数字化。毕竟，通过 Google，我们能学到更多祖先的传统。
但1975年后出生的人是习惯人群。当今文化在做什么，他们就做什么，而且大部分涉及图片，而不是文字。他们并不完全排斥书本，但在他们最喜爱的“快餐书”中，有些是根据已放映的动作片的情节写成。他们也喜欢电脑，但主要因为电脑为他们提供了机会，可以上演一出Wookiee毛毛熊对“帝国”的反叛。
的确，这里也有例外。《哈利?波特》(Harry Potter)完全是关于传统和文字的。《星球大战》游戏(Star Wars Galaxies)与图象有关，但也与一些堪与乔叟(Chaucer)并论的传统人物有关。然而，正如美国国家艺术基金会(National Endowment for the Arts)文件中所说，传统文化的消亡是千真万确的。一项名为《阅读面临危险》(Reading at Risk)的研究报告显示，平均而言，在10个大学年龄的人中，有4个人表示他们经常阅读小说、短篇故事、诗歌或者剧本（这类书包括《哈利?波特》）。相比之下，在1982年，10个人中有6个人阅读文学作品。此外，目前年轻人的文学阅读量正在加速下降。
很难让格林汉姆?科门(Greenham Common)这一代人承认我们是传统的一代，更别提让《洛基恐怖秀》(The Rocky Horror Picture Show)这代人承认这点了。毕竟，我们是最初的叛逆者。
但尽管如此，我们的许多时代差异其实很微小。
年长一代引用父母口中的丁尼生(Tennyson)诗句。年轻一代引用《绿化美国》(The Greening of America)中的话。年长一代尽量使用正确的语法，而年轻一代对此虽不太注重，但仍然尽力。在60年代人与70年代人之间，最小但最普遍的冲突之一，是在词序和介词方面的长期争执。如果你想成为一名律师或教师，你必须学会避免把介词放在句子末尾。你必须说“To whom do you talk?”，而不是“Who do you talk to?”
然而，在那个时代，反叛只是个短暂的阶段。在我们这些1975年前生的一大群人中，多数人（不包括吸毒成瘾者和毛主义者）当时都知道传统是大背景，并等待着去上班的日子。那时候，我们也许从来不用滑动尺，但我们还是会在很大程度上依照我们父母的文化习俗行事。
相反，年轻一代正在参与一场更彻底的革命。他们相信，前辈使用的大部分工具已经永远过时了。他们认为，钢笔的使用将会终结（书法已经消亡）、老式手表将风光不再，图书、百科全书、索引，还有非虚拟图书馆，都将被取代。
使我们年长一代感到焦虑的是，我们知道这些评估或许是正确的。我们也看到，我们的孩子从他们的新圈子中得到巨大的满足，即使那些圈子不是我们传统的一部分。习惯支配一切。
不过，在我们这些年老的反叛者中，一些人仍在积极、不断地想方设法（在假日里尤其如此），让孩子们陪伴在我们身边，文化上也一脉相承。毕竟，我们能够限制孩子使用电脑的时间。我们能够限制电脑。我们可以把孩子关在在传统的夏令营中，在那里甚至禁止他们使用数码相机。或许我们将不得不把我们的孩子扔回非常遥远的过去，比如说250年以前，让他们学习大提琴课程和拉丁文，这样，我们将塑造我们能够理解的成年人。
但让我们来正视这个问题：一代代之间的变化是很难阻挡的，而且前述的这些措施将是自私且残酷的。因为到了他们30几岁或40几岁的时候，我们就要去世了，到那时候，他们该同谁说话呢？
