Quote:Prophecy is a mug’s game. But then, lately, most of us are mugs. 2018 was a banner year for the art of prediction, which is not to say the science, because there really is no science of prediction. Predictive algorithms start out as historians: they study historical data to detect patterns. Then they become prophets: they devise mathematical formulas that explain the pattern, test the formulas against historical data withheld for the purpose, and use the formulas to make predictions about the future. That’s why Amazon, Google, Facebook, and everyone else are collecting your data to feed to their algorithms: they want to turn your past into your future.
This task, like most things, used to be done by hand. In 1968, the Foreign Policy Association, formed in 1918 to promote the League of Nations, celebrated its fiftieth anniversary by publishing a book of predictions about what the world would look like, technology-wise, fifty years on. “Toward the Year 2018” was edited by Emmanuel G. Mesthene, who had served in the White House as an adviser on science and technology and who ran Harvard’s Program on Technology and Society. It makes for distressing reading at the end of 2018, a year that, a golden anniversary ago, looked positively thrilling.

Two things are true about “Toward the Year 2018.” First, most of the machines that people expected would be invented have, in fact, been invented. Second, most of those machines have had consequences wildly different from those anticipated in 1968. It’s bad manners to look at past predictions to see if they’ve come true. Still, if history is any guide, today’s futurists have very little credibility. An algorithm would say the same.

Carlos R. DeCarlo, the director of automation research at I.B.M., covered computers in the book, predicting that, in 2018, “machines will do more of man’s work, but will force man to think more logically.” DeCarlo was consistently half right. He correctly anticipated miniature computers (“very small, portable storage units”), but wrongly predicted the coming of a universal language (“very likely a modified and expanded form of English”). One thing he got terribly wrong: he expressed tragically unfounded confidence that “the political and social institutions of the United States will remain flexible enough to ingest the fruits of science and technology without basic damage to its value systems.”

Is occurrence of these related to the generational cycle?

We see very few new utopian fiction, and a lot of dystopian fiction during both 3T and 4T in this cycle. But I'm not sure it was the same way in the previous one.

Are these two generations really separate? Or were the Silents just Boomers born to early for the 60s awakening?

There is (or was) a lot of countercultural Silents. Lennon was born in 1940, Mick Jagger in 1943. Osho Rajneesh and Anthony de Mello in the early 1930s. All of these heavily promoted values associated with the boomers. On the other hand I'm not sure there are any quintessential Silent ideas. Unless lack of interest in Grand Ideas is a Silent trait?

As for leadership style, I think Berlusconi (1936) was very similar to Trump, although I still think Trump's leadership style is more Reactive. Likewise, Ted Kaczynski the Unabomber was more like an Xer. His (quite accurate IMO) analysis of Leftist psychology predates gen X criticism of political correctness, but is essentially the same thing. I also saw Charles Manson described as a proto-Xer by someone on this board.

There are seemingly lots of proto-Boomers and some proto-Xers, but where are all the typically Artistic Silents? Couldn't ours be a cycle with no Artistic generation at all, and a 30-year-long (1930-60) prophetic generation?

This was a favorite thread in the now-defunct New York Times forums. We can here discuss significant books that we are reading, not limited to those with obvious connections with Fourth Turning theory. Please discuss books that will be of interest to other posters, which can obviously include literary classics, biographies of important figures of culture and history, general history, political theory. So go ahead and discuss any reading projects underway. 

I got a $50 gift card from a used-book dealer and got a literary gold mine:

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

A Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns-Goodwin

Peter the Great, Robert Massie

the autobiography of Ulysses S. Grant

As I can read only one book at a time, I have started on The Magic Mountain. My brother, who gave me the gift certificate, has gotten a start on the Grant biography.

Please discuss books that other people might want to read and discuss. No semi-pornographic novels, technical manuals, or conspiracy
theories -- please. Books off internet sources in the public domain are welcome. That is how I had Les Miserables as a reading project.

Previously read -- and it did not take much time, but it did get me thinking while it jerked some tears was Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl, a short, concise, and powerful tale of child neglect and exploitation.

From my blog - another thing that Millennials are ruining.

I’ve posted recently about Millennials and how they’ve taken over YouTube and invented new genres of video content. One common pattern is to analyze and pick apart other creative content, like popular music and film. Everything gets rehashed so quickly one must be wary of it being spoiled before one even gets around to consuming it in its original form.

This is just a personal anecdote from my life that I shared some time ago on my blog:


Back in the early to mid-2000s, I lived in an apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina. At the end of the block was a commercial plaza which had a barber shop, which is where I would go to get my hair cut. I must have gotten my haircuts there for five years. It was an old-fashioned men’s barbershop, a proprietorship owned and operated by two men. The chairs had ashtrays built into the armrests, though no one ever used them. There was a small TV up against the ceiling in one corner. Customers would hang around just for conversation. It was the kind of business that acts as a “third place,” or place of gathering and shared experience outside of the home or workplace.

I am wondering if anybody on this forum saw this movie. I didn't even know about it until this morning when I pulled something up, and, no, this has nothing to do with a former FLOTUS. This is a tragic story of coming of age angst. As a writer of song lyrics, as I was reading this I was thinking of a song that could be written based on this story. Yet I realized there already was a classic song with this theme. And it follows the enclosed write-up.

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.84)]‘Lady Bird’, Love, and Attention

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.84)]Drew Coffman[/color][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.84)]Follow[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.54)]Jan 23[/color]
(This article discusses the plot of Lady Bird. Read at your own risk!)
Moving from one city to another is a gut-wrenching thing.
It’s also, quite simply, part of life.
I know many people who couldn’t fathom living in the same city for a lifetime. I’m one of them.
‘Lady Bird’ deals with the subject of moving, and I was reminded of the sheer awkwardness of the transition that comes along with it while watching the film. It’s a surreal heartache that’s written deeply into its bones.
The movie is, at it’s core, a coming of age story. It’s about a quirky young woman growing up in Sacramento. It’s about how the city she lives in feels dull and boring and lifeless. It’s about how she yearns to escape.
The story’s main character has all the family problems that a typical teenager struggles with, dysfunctions which anyone that age is inclined to have. She feels trapped in her existence and circumstance. So, she dreams of a new home.
A catholic school student in her senior year, Lady Bird writes an essay for her college applications, drawing from her life. She’s called in to the office by a nun she has a particularly amicable relationship with, because the sister has read her essay and wants to tell her just how good it is.
“It is clear that you love Sacramento,” the nun says, and to this Lady Bird is genuinely shocked. Sick of the suburbs and desperate for something different, she is sure that she hates the place.
“I guess I pay attention,” Lady Bird responds, seeming to struggle to find the words.
The nun’s response seems to be as much for the audience as it is for the headstrong eighteen-year-old in her office:
“Don’t you think they’re the same thing? Love and attention?”
Indeed they are. At least to a certain extent.
What is love without the lavishing of attention on the other party? Conversely, what is the act of attention but love? The attention that a parent might give a child in a strained relationship? The attention that someone struggling with their identity might give to the person they’re dating? The attention that a teenager might give to their best friend?
The attention that you give those around you, just by being present.
Lady Bird applies to colleges in New York City, and though her chances are slim (due to middling grades and a long college waitlist), she gets in. It’s only then that she realizes how much she misses everyone and everything that was in her life beforehand.
Right before Lady Bird leaves, she gets her driver’s license. She’s a bit late in receiving it at the age of 18, but this is just another part of being a poor kid from a one-car family. When she arrives in New York she finds herself thinking back to her last days in Sacramento, of driving on the streets and freeways which at one time had seemed so mundane but now seem so full of nostalgia.
Lady Bird finds herself thinking about her mother. About how this uncommunicative and emotionally out of touch person drove down the same lanes that she did. She finds herself thinking about her father. About how the roads were full of places where she’d asked him to pull over and let her out, a request made so that she’d be spared the indignity of that final mile to school. She finds herself thinking those Sacramento roads themselves, full of so many little details. About how the city which seemed so dull now feels so special.
When we leave a place (or a person), we’re apt to think of it (or them) so much more. We create an inner, mental attention which ignores the imperfections and can blossom into love.
The tragedy that Lady Bird reveals is how unfortunate it is that sometimes we give that love only when we’ve left a place behind.
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• [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.68)]Film[/color]
  
• [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.68)]Movies[/color]
  
• [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.68)]Coming Of Age[/color]
  
• [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.68)]Love[/color]
  
• [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.68)]Attention[/color]
  

They are underpaid!

Quote:Since millennials first started entering the workforce, their spending habits have been blamed for killing off industries ranging from casual restaurant dining to starter houses. However, a new study by the Federal Reserve suggests it might be less about how they are spending their money and more about not having any to spend.

A study published this month by Christopher Kurz, Geng Li and Daniel J. Vine found millennials are less financially well-off than members of earlier generations when they were the same ages, with "lower earnings, fewer assets and less wealth."
Their finances were compared with Generation X, baby boomers, the silent generation and the greatest generation.

The researchers examined spending, income, debt, net worth and demographic factors among the generations to determine "it primarily is the differences in average age and then differences in average income that explain a large and important portion of the consumption wedge between millennials and other cohorts."

What are the defining characteristics of this micro-generation?

My tentative description would be that we have Millennials' positivity without the collectivism and technology obsession, plus Xers' adventurousness and individualism without the cynicism.

Billie Piper, my namesake, could be a typical Xennial. Or at least her character:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Piper
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Rose_Tyler