Posted by Richard at September 8th, 2007

I orginally started thinking about this idea when having lunch with two designer friends who both confessed to Web exhaustion while I was discussing Facebook and (as I see it) the looming death of MySpace. This isn’t anything particularly unusual, of course. Lots of people are left in a state of shock by the rapid pace of change on the Internet. The surprising thing was that both these friends are rising stars in the design world, use the Web to market their work, and teach at top design schools, and are on the younger side of Generation X. What’s more, another friend who was with us (who has his own Webcomic, has done his share of writing about Webcomics, and is curating an exhibit on Webcomics) agreed. All four of us were Gen Xers who don’t remember William Gibson inventing the word “cyberspace,” we just knew it was an omnipresent force for us since college. (I was the only one old enough to remember when being on the Internet and being online weren’t synonymous.)

Thus, it was especially interesting to see Wired but not Web 2.0? That’s normal, study says.

So here’s what I’m thinking in broad terms: a coordinated hypertext/podcast featuring library research on Gen X and their continuing relationships with technology in conjunction with personal interviews with Gen X members about their own Web use. This is still very broad and could use some whittling, but it’s a starting place.

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