The instant generation

My thesis supervisor is an email person. Our first correspondence started with me emailing her arranging an appointment at 7-ish one Monday morning and she replying me in less than 5 minutes. It was not a coincidence. In fact, she’s like constantly on email and if you can’t hear from her 12 hours after an email (even if you email her at 1am on Sunday), you can assume that something has gone really wrong and you’d better call the police to see if she’s well.

And now my new placement supervisor is an iPhone-cum-email person. She once sent me an identical email twice within 60 hours. She must have thought the first email may have lost in cyberspace for some reason as she emailed me on a Friday afternoon and didn’t hear from me on Monday and so resent it. My fault—I don’t always check my student email on weekends. But now I do.

When I still worked full-time in Hong Kong, I checked my work email quite frequently – while I was at work and off work. Still I couldn’t guarantee a prompt reply (like within 24 hours). Now having two supervisors of the same breed, I have to convert myself.

The availability of cheap Internet service and the launch of all those fancy gadgets like iPhone and Blackberry have bred a new generation of human beings – the instant generation. Those who are under 30 but don’t even have an email or a mobile phone are like social outcasts who refuse to live in the modern world.

They have to receive gratification/response instantly and their attention span is comparable to a 10-year-old’s who doesn’t have the patience to read more than 160 characters without being distracted. The best way to irritate this breed is to make them wait replacing their gadgets with novels—books that you have to hold and turn the pages manually (sorry, no pictures). A life without the Internet or a mobile phone? It’s not life at all.

For this generation, managing their personal and social life when they’re on the go is like piloting a spaceship. They need to make sure their iPod is playing the right holiday-moody-classic-boyband list but not the gloomy-worklife-heavy-metal-90s list. They tweet from time to time (e.g. @cool_gal2009 taking bus 2 MK 2 c friends or @cool_gal2009 now@MK w/ friends or @cool_gal2009 having choco icecream) as their friends obviously want to know what exactly they’re doing at the moment. Then they may want to reply the msn messages flashing on their phone screen asking them what they’re doing and they really want to redirect their techno-dummy friends to Twitter. While waiting in a queue to pay for their T-shirt at H&M, they may want to comment on their friends’ photos on Facebook and like a few photos and status updates. They're sure their Facebook friends can't wait to see their new T-shirt and what they have for lunch so they decide to take a few snapshots and upload them to Facebook. There’re a few sms messages to reply single-fingeredly as well. Feeling bored? Their PSP can no doubt keep them occupied. Their friends who are physically with them at the moment? Don’t worry, they’re doing exactly the same thing.

These forms of e-communication have actually put off some primitive yet crucial form of communication. Maintaining friendship has been reduced to mass-sending hugs and kisses with a click and dumping your boyfriends or girlfriends is made easy by changing your relationship status on Facebook – thank God you don’t even need a personalized sms and everyone including your now ex knows that. You feel wanted all the time like you have lots of friends.

However, in reality, we don’t make friends like we do on Facebook. We spend less and less quality quiet time with our friends, family and ourselves—and truly ourselves alone. We become a generation with less patience, shorter attention span, more intense self insecurity and higher intolerance of solitude (which merely means being alone).

Like nuclear technology, communication technology is a two-edged sword. It’s cliché I know, but the question remains whether we can handle something which can potentially kill the essence of humanity.