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INTRODUCTION
Generation X
Born: 1966-1976
Coming of Age: 1988-1994
Age in 2004: 28 to 38
Current Population: 41 million
Sometimes referred to as the “lost” generation, this was the first generation of “latchkey” kids, exposed to lots of daycare and divorce. Known as the generation with the lowest voting participation rate of any generation, Gen Xers were quoted by Newsweek as “the generation that dropped out without ever turning on the news or tuning in to the social issues around them.”
Gen X is often characterized by high levels of skepticism, “what’s in it for me” attitudes and a reputation for some of the worst music to ever gain popularity. Now, moving into adulthood William Morrow (Generations) cited the childhood divorce of many Gen Xers as “one of the most decisive experiences influencing how Gen Xers will shape their own families”.
Gen Xers are arguably the best educated generation with 29% obtaining a bachelor’s degree or higher (6% higher than the previous cohort). And, with that education and a growing maturity they are starting to form families with a higher level of caution and pragmatism than their parents demonstrated. Concerns run high over avoiding broken homes, kids growing up without a parent around and financial planning.
Generation Y, Echo Boomers or Millenniums
Born: 1977-1994
Coming of Age: 1998-2006
Age in 2004: 10 to 22
Current Population: 71 million
The largest cohort since the Baby Boomers, their high numbers reflect their births as that of their parent generation..the last of the Boomer Is and most of the Boomer II s. Gen Y kids are known as incredibly sophisticated, technology wise, immune to most traditional marketing and sales pitches...as they not only grew up with it all, they’ve seen it all and been exposed to it all since early childhood.
Gen Y members are much more racially and ethnically diverse and they are much more segmented as an audience aided by the rapid expansion in Cable TV channels, satellite radio, the Internet, e-zines, etc.
Gen Y are less brand loyal and the speed of the Internet has led the cohort to be similarly flexible and changing in its fashion, style consciousness and where and how it is communicated with.
Gen Y kids often raised in dual income or single parent families have been more involved in family purchases...everything from groceries to new cars. One in nine Gen Yers has a credit card co-signed by a parent.
Generation Z
Born: 1995-2012
Coming of Age: 2013-2020
Age in 2004: 0-9
Current Population: 23 million and growing rapidly
While we don’t know much about Gen Z yet...we know a lot about the environment they are growing up in. This highly diverse environment will make the grade schools of the next generation the most diverse ever. Higher levels of technology will make significant inroads in academics allowing for customized instruction, data mining of student histories to enable pinpoint diagnostics and remediation or accelerated achievement opportunities.
Gen Z kids will grow up with a highly sophisticated media and computer environment and will be more Internet savvy and expert than their Gen Y forerunners. More to come on Gen Z...stay tuned.
Generation Y refers to the population group in the US born from somewhere around 1976 to around 2000. They are sometimes called echo boomers because some of them are the children of baby boomers. On the other hand, some Generation Y children, especially those born in the late 1980s or afterwards, may be the grandchildren of baby boomers. Other names for this group are the Millennials, the Internet Generation, and the abbreviated Gen Y or Gen Yers.
There are some vagaries in defining Generation Y, as it can encompass two generations. A child born in 1976, probably to a true baby boomer, could easily have a child born in 1996, 20 years later. There’s no official consensus on the beginning or end term of Generation Y, and the term may be considered as a pejorative one, just as the term Generation X is sometimes used in a negative sense. Echo boomer may be inaccurate too, since the real rise in birth rates that defines many boomers having babies is much more limited. This increase in birthrates, approaching levels of the last years of the baby boom is defined as between 1989-1993, a much smaller span than that which defines Gen Y.
All population groups tend to be tarred with generalizations, some accurate, and some completely missing the mark. This particular group has been called rude, retributive, and prone to childhood obesity and drug and alcohol abuse. While certainly a few Generation Y kids may have these issues, it’s a gross misconception to suggest this is true of all kids in this 24-year span. It would also be premature to make conclusive statements about this generation, since its youngest members are just now reaching their preteen years.
What can be said about this group that is in no way pejorative is that they are the first group to come to age just as the Internet began to completely flower. They are thus familiar, usually from childhood, with not only Internet surfing, but also all the gadgets that have come along with it. Cellphones, electronic organizers, cable radio, hundreds of television stations, and many more things folks born before this period would consider novelties are just the basic staples of existence for a Generation Y kid or young adult.
For this reason, advertisers to the Gen Y group specifically target this audience and see them as valuable current consumers or soon to be consumers. As a market, this group can have significant impact on spending, since 76 million people fall into the Gen Y category. Other trends that Generation Y seems to have impacted are things like the PG-13 rating, something that has only existed in the past few years. Film manufacturers often strive for the PG-13 rating, because to do so means they’ll attract the Gen Y audience, who are for the most part avid moviegoers and consistent spenders at the movies.
When Generation Y people are viewed in a negative light, this seems to be a reflection on the fact that they’ll comprise a significant amount of the workforce just as the last baby boomers hit the retirement age of 65. If Social Security stays in place, Gen Yers will be the ones paying into the system. With fewer people actually retiring at this age, conflict between the last baby boomers and Gen Y folks may certainly arise over competition for jobs. Concern may also exist about leaving the country in the hands of a group for which many negative generalizations exist.
Text 1
Young Blood
By Rachelle Bascara
Philippine Daily Inquirer
8:31 pm | Saturday, November 24th, 2012
We are Generation Y. We come from all walks of life, and we are united by the experience of a McDonald’s burger. We drank the Kool Aid or its local equivalent. We had to, since tap water stopped being potable when we were growing up. We learned to type shortly after learning how to write. We didn’t need to punch the letters hard to make sure that the imprint on the paper is visible. Most of what we type do not even see paper.
We write on walls without vandalizing. We have many electronic friends but only a handful of friends. The owner of Facebook is our contemporary. We may have, at some point, had a myspace or friendster account, but it’s been inactive for a while now. With automatic spellcheck on our side, we didn’t need to learn how to spell. Whenever a restaurant bill arrives, we are quick to whip out our mobile phones. Even quicker are our dexterous fingers in typing in the equation—and voila! We didn’t actually have to do arithmetic.
We are still young. But we are old enough to remember the good old days of the SOUND of Internet dial up. We’ll buy things we haven’t physically touched as long as we can see electronic images and excellent customer feedback. We use “google,” “message” and “skype” as verbs. We text people. We LOL, ROTFL and LMAO. We ignore some calls inadvertently, some deliberately. Our conduct on Facebook subscribes to the maxim that “To ignore is human, to block is divine.” We know “spam” is not just a piece of meat, and we avoid it as much as we can.
We call symptoms of ADHD “multitasking.” And, we multitask all the time. We call “online grocery shopping while downloading movies while uploading photos while chatting” efficiency. Yes, we have several tabs and windows simultaneously open. No, we will not wait while you load your page. We want information, and we want it now. LMK ASAP b/c I GTG. Knowledge is passé, information-overload-without-retention is the way to go.
We literally have the world at our fingertips with google maps. We’ve zoomed in on where we live on google maps. We wonder what we did before Wikipedia. We lamented the deactivation of limewire. We google ourselves. We google you. We google the weather, the news, the bus schedule, the cheapest flight, the song, the music video, the lyrics, the current conversion rate, the restaurant, the movie schedule, the ex-boyfriend, the boyfriend’s ex-girlfriends, the next date. We once had Backstreet Boys audio cassette tapes, but we don’t have Justin Bieber posters. We have birth control, while the people who really need it don’t. Some of us have offspring, some will have offspring. Hopefully, some will choose to adopt when they realize that there are millions of children that die shortly after they are born into lethal poverty or because Brad and Angie are cool as far as Hollywood couples go.
We’ve learned how to swim in the sea of facts and figures. Our minds have been calibrated by multimillion transnational corporations to respond favorably to the products and services they sell. We live in societies of manic advertising and product placements. We trudge on waiting for the next paycheck so we can buy those shoes, upgrade our computers, take that vacation, move to a nicer place, afford organic food, get a bigger TV that is as thin as Mary-Kate Olsen’s limbs when she had anorexia. We become desensitized to the fact that 925 million people are hungry while we try to lose just a couple of pounds. We relapse and become sensitized for a bit. And then, we retreat into a state of paralysis as we ponder the crimes of humanity.
We try to console ourselves that it’s not our fault. We try to do something good in our own little way. We give some coins to that guy on the street—the homeless, the junkie, the hitchhiker or the WWF volunteer—just give someone something. We relapse again when we realize the futility of our charity.
We go back to Facebook when enough time has elapsed. Our “friends” have uploaded new photos and updated their statuses. We numb our brain with the smiling faces and witticisms. It’s not difficult to avoid moments of lucidity when we have the rest of the world conspiring to help us forget.
Rachelle Bascara, 29, received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in philosophy from the University of the Philippines and the University College London, respectively. She is working on yet another postgraduate degree at Birkbeck College, University of London.
TEXT 2
Teenagers and young adults - the so-called Generation Y - have watched with horror as their parents worked punishing hours in their scramble for money and status. Now, as this group go in search of jobs, they have different priorities. They care less about salaries, and more about flexible working, time to travel and a better work-life balance. And employers are having to meet their demands. Anushka Asthana reports
Anushka Asthana
The Observer, Sunday 25 May 2008
Settling down on the shiny black sofa in the front room of their student house in Jesmond, Newcastle, Ailsa McNeil and her flatmates discuss what they would do once they had left university.
'The idea of moving into the financial world of London and working long hours inside a massive company does not appeal to me,' said McNeil, placing a textbook down on the cream carpet, among scattered magazines, scarves and revision notes. The 20-year-old had a final-year exam for her economics degree the next day.
People in their late teens and early twenties, she argued, were far keener to have a 'good life with a standard amount of money' than 'slog' their guts out like their parents. 'I saw my mum and dad work really hard, but my work ethic is different,' said McNeil. 'I want to do well but I want to have great fun in life. Money and work are not the be all and end all. If you put all your effort into your job you lose sense of what you are living for.'
McNeil is not alone. New research has found that a similar attitude to work is burgeoning among the group of people known as Generation Y - usually defined as those between the ages of 11 and 25. A study of more than 2,500 people born after the early Eighties found that they were rebelling against their parents' values and were determined not to lead lives that revolved so heavily around the world of work.
Instead, they were ready to resign if their jobs were not fulfilling and fun, with decent holidays and the opportunity to take long stretches off for charity work or travel. Salary and status were not high on the priority list, according to the study by Talentsmoothie, a firm that consults companies in banking, professional services and the law on the changing workforce.
Here is a group that has never known, or even witnessed, hardship, recession or mass unemployment and does not fear redundancy or repossession, according to researchers. The result is a generation that believes it can have it all and is not embarrassed to ask for it; a generation that will constitute the majority of the workforce within a decade.
That is why major companies, embroiled in the battle to attract the very best graduates, are doing whatever they can to lure them in. 'The previous generation saw work as a primary part of life,' said Madalyn Brooks, HR director at Procter and Gamble. 'When they left education, work was a dominant part of what they did and they were not looking for time out. Now we are seeing the growth of a different profile of candidate. They have grown up in relatively affluent families. They want to be sure that they can strike a balance between work and their personal life, and so the opportunity to take time off, to travel, to work for a company with a strong social responsibility record, these are all concerns that we increasingly hear when recruiting talent.'
Procter and Gamble has already adapted its recruitment efforts and what it offers to meet the needs of Generation Y. Instead of just stressing higher salaries, this international company is highlighting the opportunity for flexible hours, the chance to work from home, the offer of up to a year of 'family leave' to look after children or elderly parents, and the promise of regular three-month sabbaticals. Similar packages are being offered by companies across Britain.
In his open-plan office in the centre of Aberdeen, Simon Chinn, 25, a senior consultant at a recruitment agency, rushed between meetings last week. He admitted that one thing that attracted him to the firm, Thorpe Molloy Recruitment, was the fact that it was flexible when employees asked for time off. In two cases colleagues travelled for a year before returning to the same job.
Chinn argued that it also played an important role for the candidates he was helping to recruit. 'There is an oil service company in Aberdeen that has a very attractive benefits package,' he gave as an example. 'There is a good pension, gym membership in the office, opportunities for travel and sabbaticals. People can take time out and come back to the job. That does attract the best talent.'
The fact that young people changed jobs more frequently, argued Chinn, meant they were less willing to put up with long hours or poor holidays. Officials in the US have estimated that a typical member of Generation Y will have 10 jobs by the age of 38. 'People think, why stay in a job you do not enjoy?' he said.
In Newcastle, McNeil and her flatmates reached a similar conclusion. 'If a company offers more flexibility, it is a sign that it has the type of culture you would want to join,' said the undergraduate, who has signed up to the Milkround, a graduate recruitment network.
The fact that she now receives more than 20 emails a day from employers makes her feel more confident about her future options: 'It is as if people expect to get a job. I also think that, unlike our parents, we feel like we have financial back-up if things go wrong. But I guess that could change if we enter a recession.'
It is the lack of a significant downturn in the economy over the past decade and a half that is driving the new attitude, say experts. Generation Y: what they want from work, the research from Talentsmoothie, concluded: 'They have only ever known economic prosperity. They have many choices: gap years and extensive travel are the norm. They can join a company, or set up their own. They have seen their parents in stressful jobs, working long hours, and realise that hard work for big companies apparently does not bring prosperity and happiness, or make the world a better place. They want their lives to be different - and this shows. If they are dissatisfied, they resign.'
The study found that 85 per cent of Generation Y wanted to spend 30 per cent to 70 per cent of their time working from home. More than half wanted a flexible working arrangement.
The top priority when choosing a job was 'doing work that I love'. 'Earning lots of money' was far behind, in seventh place. When it came to walking away from an employer, a lack of motivation was the top reason followed by a work-life balance leaning too far towards the job. 'The Boomer generation [who are over 45] created the culture of long working hours and Xers [aged between 28 and 45] reluctantly accepted it,' the report said. 'But not Generation Y. While they are not work-shy, they don't live to work. They will get the job done on time ... but on their own terms.'
The confidence, it said, came from a feeling of security: 'Unlike Xers and Boomers, they are not remotely daunted by the spectre of unemployment.'
Simon Walker, a founding director of Talentsmoothie, said this generation considered work something to do, not somewhere to go. 'As long as they achieve what they need to they are not worried about being seen to do it at their desks,' he said, explaining why things were different for the older generation. 'I am 40 and when I was 10, 12, 14, there was the winter of discontent, Thatcherism and miner strikes. Three million were unemployed, so subconsciously employment was seen as precious and there was no such thing as a secure job. For the next generation, there was full employment, unprecedented economic growth. Their attitude is: "If I can't get one job, I will get another one." They are not preconditioned, like many of us, to be cautious of authority.'
In fact, the research found that younger workers were far more willing to challenge managers and were undeterred by traditional hierarchy. Walker said he was trying to help 'Boomer' and 'Xer' managers to understand the new attitude and not get frustrated by it. Much of what the workers were demanding, he said, such as work-life balance, personal development, exciting jobs and motivating managers, would be welcomed by older workers as well. But the clash of values was causing friction in offices.
In one case, outlined in the study, a chief executive of a large insurance firm emailed thousands of employees to inform them about a major decision. Sitting at his desk in the middle of the huge office, James, 24, who had recently joined the firm, told his older colleagues he disagreed with what had been done. He quickly decided to share his feelings with the head of the company and sent his thoughts directly to him in an email.
Within minutes, a reply popped up on James's screen: 'I have been running this company for 10 years; I think I know what I am doing.' Still undeterred, he hit back: 'I realise this is an uncomfortable conversation but I am not the only one that disagrees with you.' Luckily he was able to convince the boss that he was not simply being rude.
The overconfidence of Generation Y is proving a challenge for employers. This summer the Association of Graduate Recruiters will host a conference, at which delegates will debate how far firms need to go towards accommodating the desires of younger workers and how seriously they should take the concept of Generation Y.
Carl Gilleard, chief executive of the AGR, recently described young workers as 'opinionated' and more demanding of employers. He said: 'One colleague who recently faced a barrage of questions about what her firm will give one young man, was forced into reacting with the question, "And what are you going to give us?" '
While warning that those who did not make an effort to respond to the needs of this group would end up 'dead in the water', Gilleard added: 'Just how far do employers lean over backwards before they end up being horizontal?' Others felt that companies should not 'overreact' to the new values and attitudes, warning that things could soon change again.
Helen Bostock, global head of campus recruiting for the investment bank Credit Suisse and a board member of the AGR, said: 'A few years ago I recall the dotcom bubble when everyone was trying to reinvent themselves with an entrepreneurial culture. Now it is generational theory. What happens is that employers get sucked into the whole thing, then the pendulum swings one way or another. One thing that is consistent is that there is always something we are tackling. If it is not work-life balance, it is diversity, inclusion or something else.
'In reality large graduate recruiters take much longer to change and there is a danger that employers will overreact and reinvent themselves as something they are not.' Bostock gave the example of the 'dress-down' craze, when thousands of firms encouraged their employees to come to work in more casual attire each Friday. 'That does not happen now, people have largely returned to the world of suits,' she said.
Given her global role, Bostock argued that Generation Y differed from country to country and warned that the time for UK graduates to be complacent about job opportunities would soon come to an end.
'There are highly talented individuals from China and India heading our way,' she said. 'They are hungry, focused on work and focused on academic success. Just look at the number of high-achieving Asian women studying maths and science compared with home-grown students. This generation is facing different challenges.'
Walker said he planned to look at how attitudes differed across the world. He argued that 'generational attitudes' were partly dictated by age but also circumstances. In China, Generation Y was made up of only-children, as a result of the one-child policy, who grew up through difficult economic times. They would have very different values to their British counterparts, he said.
In Britain, meanwhile, there would be people of all ages who shared typical Generation Y attitudes, he argued, but they would be far more common within the age group. One of those attitudes, according to research by Walker and others, is an overwhelming desire to be fulfilled in their jobs.
A study in 2004 carried out by Common Purpose, an organisation that offers training for leaders and managers, found that those who were not getting satisfaction at work were hitting a 'quarter-life crisis'. Searching for Something concluded that employers had to accommodate young workers' wider ambitions or risk losing them by the age of 30.
'We see young people that are searching for some sort of meaning in life and if you can't align their values with the organisation they might leave,' said Julia Middleton, the group's chief executive. 'I think life is cyclical - and there is a return to people searching for meaning and searching for values.'
Middleton agreed that economic prosperity had fuelled the values of Generation Y. 'If you haven't had money or faced the serious threat of not having money, you take money much more seriously,' she argued. 'We have a generation that has not felt the threat for some time.'
Now, for the first time in many years that threat is returning. While it may come as an uncomfortable shock for those self-assured members of Generation Y, it could also create a whole new work ethic among the toddlers and babies that constitute Generation Z; born after 2002 they still have a long way to go before they are thrown into a whole new world of work.
Generation Z, that group born between 1992 and 2010, is making a greater impact on society than any generation in the past. This group is the first to be born in the age of the Internet. They do not know a world without it. Thanks to the ubiquity of high-speed Internet, smartphones, and tablets, their world is an on-demand, information age that they are actively helping shape before they’re even teenagers.
They’re a tough generation, too – a bit more hardened than the Xs and Ys who came before them. The Zs see foreclosed homes in their neighborhoods. They know someone with a parent who can’t find a job. They know someone who’s been to war. They’re not sure where the tradition of taking off one’s shoes before boarding an airplane started.
The average age of a Gen Z is ten. When I was ten, I had slightly less than zero impact on the world at large. For instance, only my parents were aware of my dislike for Tang, that orange drink that astronauts apparently brought back from outer space. The makers of Tang were never aware of my dislike for their product. In fact, they may have never received any feedback from a ten-year-old. So Tang had a long, profitable run at breakfast tables even though I didn’t know anyone who actually liked it.
That’s not Gen Z, though. Not being “heard” is not one of their problems. Thanks to social media’s “likes” and “plus 1” buttons, Gen Zs express their opinions online every day. In addition, they are actually shopping online everyday thanks to Amazon cards, Xbox cards, iTunes cards, etc. And everyone’s taking note, from other Gen Zs, to parents, to advertisers, to businesses. They have a powerful voice that now truly counts. Studies show that Gen Zs are more influenced in their shopping trends by other Gen Zs than by advertising. They want to see the +1s of their peers, and they, more importantly, want to be the first to +1 something. That’s fantastic news for startups and other newcomers. That simple curation is very important to the Gen Zs.
This is a dramatic change for marketers and advertisers. So much so, that they are calling Gen Zs the “brand busters.” Naturally, they are focusing a tremendous amount of time and spending a great amount of money studying Gen Zs. The world is catering to this powerful group, trying to crack the code on how they operate and then reach them in a meaningful way. That sounds like a pretty solid plan, but not everyone is on board.
How are we, the educators, dealing with this first generation born in the age of the Internet? Usually we meet them at the door and tell them all electronic devices are off limits. We then give them an inflexible schedule where one size fits all. Because that’s exactly how the world will never be ever again. “On demand” and “access” are conditions that we’ve not adapted to.
In terms of technology and internet use, we’ve managed to align ourselves more with the way prisons are run than the way in which coffee shops, Wall Street, universities, government agencies, coal mining companies, service industries, the military, family homes, Hollywood, off-shore drilling, healthcare professionals, fine arts, entertainers, hair stylists, and road crews operate. Schools have become so artificial, that they are approaching irrelevancy for most students.
This is a true generational divide between educators and students. One group’s advanced technology is another group’s common, everyday world. According to Moore’s Law, that divide will only get bigger. There are even studies that show generational gaps between close siblings:
In short, here’s the problem: Generation X has entrusted the Baby Boomers to prepare Generation Z for the jobs that Generation X will create in the future. M.C. Escher would find that a challenge.
So if we want to help the Zs, we have to evolve ourselves. We have to adapt. We have to study them and rewire our own brains.
I heard a student say this last week: “As long as Google’s around, why do I need school?”
We know, of course, that there’s a lot more to school than the links that Google can provide, right? Well, at least there should be.
A teacher might find that this is a challenging, 21st century assignment: “Create a Powerpoint presentation that highlights the history of Shakespeare’s theatre.”
Students will use technology to create the presentation. This should be a real challenge for them and keep them busy. Mission accomplished.
Students will be delighted with this assignment, no doubt. They know, though, that they can go to Google’s advance search, type in “history of Shakespeare’s theatre,” and then choose PPT as the file type. All results will be PowerPoints that others have already uploaded to the net. Assignment done in seven seconds. No challenge. No busy. Mission fail.
If we studied the Gen Zs like the marketers do, we would know the assignment should be something like this: “Download four Powerpoint presentations on the history of Shakespeare’s theatre from the net. Explain what is good and bad about each. Rank them 1 through 4. Remix into your own presentation, and give proper credit to each. Create one new slide, upload to the net, and your classmates will help evaluate.”
Now we have them curating, creating, remixing, and opining in a much more relevant way than before. In addition, if they are doing the work just for their teacher, they will make sure that it’s “good enough.” But if they’re doing it for their peers, they will make sure it’s “GOOD!”
July 15, 2008
Will Generation Z - history's most technogically adept - evolve into tomorrow's realists or idealists?
Pinned to the wall of my daughter's grade 1 classroom is a sheet of butcher's paper, listing questions she and her classmates would like to answer. Will the water run out? How many children travel to school in a sustainable way? Are cities a good idea? The next sheet lists ways they will find out the answers. First on the list: check the internet.
These six- and seven-year-olds are part of the emerging generation Z. Demographers and social researchers have banged on endlessly about gen Y and their rapid embrace of new technology but gen Z is the first generation born into a digital world. It's a bit like learning a language in high school compared with being a native speaker (hence an alternative name for gen Z: digital natives). This key difference, and others, is now attracting the attention of those who want to know the answer to the question: what kind of adults will gen Z - this century's first generation - grow up to be?
First things first, though: the age group. It's a bone of contention among the experts, who argue that the first gen Zs were born as early as 1991 (making the oldest now 17) or as late as 2001 (so the oldest is seven). "I get frustrated beyond belief with all the age spans," says IBISWorld founder Phil Ruthven, who firmly plumps for a 2001 start point and a 2020 end point, supported by 150 years of charts. Others, including social researcher Mark McCrindle, say gen Z began around 1995, so the oldest are now hitting 13, and the last gen Zs will be born next year.
That's a huge discrepancy, based largely on differing start and end points for the preceding generations Y, X and baby boomers. Until the experts sort out their differences, it seems safe to assume that today's babies to seven-year-olds are definitely gen Z, and kids aged eight to 12 are on the fuzzy line between very young gen Y or the oldest gen Zs. Certainly, these older pre-teens were toddlers when the internet took over the world, so on that point they can be classified as "digital natives".
McCrindle, founder of McCrindle Research, says that understanding what sort of adults will emerge from today's primary schools requires a close look at their home environment. Families are smaller, parents are older and most mothers are in the workforce. There's less smacking, a lot of structured after-school activities and a bit of a "bubble-wrap" mentality where kids are driven everywhere and playgrounds have rubberised surfaces. All this translates, McCrindle says, into a generation that's "fairly demanding and maybe a bit precocious" with high expectations and plenty of material comforts and toys.
If this sounds scarily like "all about me" generation Y (raised by the baby boomers), it is - but with an important difference. McCrindle says generation X parents are reacting against the baby boomers' overindulgent and free-spirited parenting style. Although gen Xers have a tendency to be "helicopter parents" - hovering over every aspect of their kids' lives - they are also swinging back to what might be termed traditional values. McCrindle explains this as an emphasis on old-fashioned notions such as work ethic, etiquette, resilience, fortitude and taking responsibility for oneself.
"This character development is the key thing to watch," he says. "All the research we've done shows gen Y lacks resilience and a work ethic. Generation Z is different." He detects a move away from the past decade's rampant materialism, a stronger emphasis on social justice and a generation of highly educated, technologically savvy, innovative thinkers.
"They will be incredible achievers, leading the nation through issues like the ageing population and climate change," says McCrindle, himself the father of four gen Zs aged six months to six years. "I'm optimistic." His research predicts that rather than taxpayer Z resenting their entry into the workforce just when ageing peaks, they will soar up income and power ladders faster than their forebears.
IBISWorld's Phil Ruthven is also optimistic about gen Z. He classifies them as "adaptives" - a "silent" generation that is obedient and socially aware and has scruples. Ruthven's theories are based on US authors William Strauss and Neil Howe, generation gurus who argue that history shows a cycle of four generational types, always in the same order. Based on this pattern, he expects gen Z to soften and balance the hard-driving gen Ys, with a greater social conscience and notion of fairness - and a tendency to more guilt trips.
"You're probably going to have the most savvy generation of all time," says Ruthven, who agrees with McCrindle that the two key pointers to the adult gen Zs are their parents and technology, especially the internet. "They are going into primary school already using the internet and PCs, making them the most information-intensive generation of all time."
For a glimpse of the likely effect of internet exposure at a very young age, it's worth hearing Peter Williams talk about his three children, aged 18, 16 and 14. On most definitions, they're gen Ys, not Zs, but the Williams home has been hooked up to the internet since 1993, at least seven years before most families. "My kids have been on the internet ever since they were born," says Williams, the chief executive of Deloitte Digital, who is also an early buyer of gaming consoles, networking gear and every other type of computer-related technology.
"They take being connected to everything as a given," he explains. "They have been exposed to so much more information, music, movies, cultures and photos. Their capacity to absorb information is breathtaking but they like the short grabs. They become incredibly knowledgeable about their passions because they have access to a mountain of information that we never had."
McCrindle's research notes that this generation values speed over accuracy but Richard Watson, author of trends report What's Next at nowandnext.com, says it's too early to predict how growing up as digital natives will shape them as adults (like Ruthven, he says the oldest gen Zs are only seven or eight). Certainly, he believes their multi-play computer gaming - requiring collaboration, leadership and fast strategy switches - will have an influence. Co-operating with others and problem-solving will be second nature to Z, although McCrindle adds that cotton-wool parenting may make them risk-averse.
Surprisingly, Watson is the only expert interviewed who mentions the environment. The deluge of media coverage and school projects on climate change will make gen Z far more environmentally aware, he believes. (At my daughters' primary school, the way each child travels to school is recorded.) "I have a five-year-old son on permanent Earth Hour watch," says Watson, laughing. "He keeps switching off the freezer and the computer and all the lights. It's driving me around the bend."
KPMG demographer Bernard Salt argues that gen Z started way back in 1991 and finished in 2006. That makes his oldest Zers 17. He differs from other researchers in believing the moniker won't stick because Americans says zee and everyone else says zed. "I'm pushing for 'millennium generation'," he says, noting that other suggestions include the "bubble-wrap generation" and generation T (for toys).
He agrees there are similarities between Y and Z, such as smaller family sizes and more attention from parents (making them comfortable with authority). "It's tempting to say gen Z will be just like gen Y, only more so," he muses. "But I don't think so. There's a fork in the road. The parents of gen Y, the baby boomers, were guilty about Mum working, and therefore very indulgent. The parents of gen Z - gen X - have let go of the angst. It's tougher love - Mean Mummy instead of Yummy Mummy. They have a more realistic view of the world."
Anyway, Salt says, gen-X parents had to pay off university debts and then faced exorbitant property prices, so there's not as much disposable income sloshing around. Gen Z may also experience a recession, after 18 years of economic prosperity, and perhaps see a parent lose their job.
"Gen Y are wanters, demanders, idealists," says Salt. "Gen Z will be realists and more balanced than Y. They might come along in the 2020s and clean up the mess left by gen Y, who couldn't handle the downturn. They could be the doers, the fixers."
Swimming against the tide is Hugh Mackay, one of Australia's foremost social researchers. "Everyone puts the boot into gen Y," says Mackay, who defines them as today's 15- to 30-year-olds. "They're a wonderful generation with a lot to teach us."
Gen Z he's less confident about, saying their overzealous helicopter parents, obsessed with the "art of parenting", will create a burden for their offspring. "These kids are overindulged, with a towering self-esteem - as opposed to self-respect - which won't be healthy," he warns. "We are facing the most rebellious and obnoxious group of teenagers ever."
Each generation is characterized by different experiences that shape their perspectives and behavior.
Generation Z is…
Comfortable with and even dependent on technology, having grown up in a digital world where technology was ever-present
Constantly multitasking with a variety of online products and sophisticated electronic devices, and appreciates simple, interactive designs
More socially responsible, due to greater access to a large online information pool they are more acutely aware of modern day challenges such as terrorism and climate change
Always connected, communicating through various social networking channels, often across countries and cultures which significantly influences their decision process Companies targeting Generation Z will want to…
Adopt technology-based marketing and sales channels such as text messages (SMS), mobile Internet, social networking portals, etc.
Aim to ‘catch them young’ (especially relevant for technology companies)
Enhance their virtual world presence with online product information and purchase facility
Develop high value-for-money products that are multifunctional with simple and interactive designs
Provide ‘green’ products and services or take a proactive stance toward the environment
A DAY IN THE INTERNET
The internet is a huge place but just how much information is passed each day? The following statistics should give you some idea of just how much information is being generated in a given day on the internet. Even if you thought the internet was big, likely these numbers will surprise you.
Starting with email, in one day, there are more emails sent out that than a whole years worth of letter mail in the US. To do that, over 210 billion emails are sent out each day over the web. Of course emails aren’t the only content that is being transmitted. There are some 3 million images uploaded each day to flikr alone. That is enough to fill a hypothetical 375,000 page photo album.
Mobile phones increasingly are becoming a hub of internet access, but most people believe that it is on a small level will little apps. But it turns out that much more content is passed by mobile phones that one would think; 43,449,547 gigabytes worth is sent each day. That would be 1.7 million Blu-Ray Discs or 9.2 million DVDs. If you think back just 10 years ago when we used floppy discs, which would be the equivalent of 63.9 trillion 3.5 inch floppy discs on mobile phones alone. The daily value of those mobile services is around $145 Million with an amazing $13 million generated from mobile video games alone.
Social media is another area worth looking into as it is one of the main ways that new content is being generated every day. Some 700,000 new Facebook members are added each day. Compared to the total US population that may not sound large but it is in fact about the same size as the entire population of Guyana. In terms of content generated, Facebook users create 45 million status updates each day and Twitter has about 5 million tweets. Even though blogs are on the decline since the advent of social media some 900,000 new blog articles are written every day. This is no small number in fact if those articles were taken alone it would be enough content to fill the pages of the New York Times for 19 years.
The internet is also growing at an astounding rate as new users all over the world are signing on. As developing nations continue to increase in internet usership we can expect to see daily internet usage far exceed the statistics provided in this article.
Part 3 GENERATION C
First published in February 2004 | No, this is not about a new niche generation of youngsters born between March 12, 1988 and April 24, 1993; the C stands for CONTENT, and anyone with even a tiny amount of creative talent can (and probably will) be part of this not-so-exclusive trend.
So what is it all about? The GENERATION C phenomenon captures the an avalanche of consumer generated 'content' that is building on the Web, adding tera-peta bytes of new text, images, audio and video on an ongoing basis.
The two main drivers fuelling this trend? (1) The creative urges each consumer undeniably possesses. We're all artists, but until now we neither had the guts nor the means to go all out. (2) The manufacturers of content-creating tools, who relentlessly push us to unleash that creativity, using -- of course -- their ever cheaper, ever more powerful gadgets and gizmos. Instead of asking consumers to watch, to listen, to play, to passively consume, the race is on to get them to create, to produce, and to participate.
As Nielsen coins a new term to describe young adults ages 18 to 34, a group it considers bound together by a digitally connected lifestyle, one Gen C'er has some advice for advertisers.
by Emily Dreyfuss
February 23, 2012 2:58 PM PST
The C in "Generation C," not surprisingly, stands for connected. If you've ever been ignored by a twentysomething in an elevator who's too busy texting to hear your plea for a sixth-floor button push, you already know what Nielsen's getting at.
According to the 2011 U.S. Census, people in this newly labeled age group (formerly called Gen Y, or the Millennials, or Generation Next, or sometimes just "those kids with some college education who are largely unemployed but building iPhone apps in their spare time") make up just "23 percent of the U.S. population."
After crunching the numbers in its U.S. Digital Consumer Report for Q3-Q4 2011 (PDF), released today, Nielsen determined that this 23 percent "represent an outsized portion of consumers watching online video (27 percent), visiting social-networking/blog sites (27 percent), owning tablets (33 percent), and using a smartphone (39 percent)." (Smartphone and tablet owner information was taken from more than 300,000 surveyed volunteer participants.)
As a proud cable cutter who watches hours upon hours of streaming content; is on Twitter so much my boyfriend has tried (unsuccessfully) to ban it from the dinner table; owns an iPad "because I honestly need it for work and life"; and has a panic attack if my smartphone is farther than arm's length from my person, those stats sound about right.
But as attractive as people like me and my "Gen C" brethren can be to advertisers due to our always-on status, we also pose a tantalizing challenge: can they get us to notice their ads?
We spend much of the day in front of screens, be they smartphones on the bus, computers at work, tablets and Roku-connected TVs at home, or all of those at once. As Nielsen reports, "57 percent of smartphone and tablet owners checked e-mail while watching a TV program--their top activity--and 44 percent visited a social-networking site."
I honestly do not notice the ads on Facebook, or at the bottom of the New York Times Android app, or at the top of Gmail.
Advertisers will probably like this stat out of the Nielsen report: 19 percent of smartphone and tablet owners also searched for product information and 16 percent looked up coupons or deals while the television was on. This makes us perfect targets for ads, but also so used to a constant onslaught of information while multitasking that we can be incredibly adept at filtering out the data we don't care about.
I honestly do not notice the ads on Facebook, or at the bottom of the New York Times Androidapp, or at the top of Gmail. Of course, I can't speak for all of my generation; I do have friends who are constantly marveling at how the targeted ads on Facebook know them so well that they often take the click bait.
Personally, though, I have such a blind spot for ads that when Web sites make the unfortunate choice to put a piece of actual content on the right side of the screen where I'm used to seeing an ad, it's too bad for them, because I miss it.
According to Nielsen, 18- to 34-year-olds comprise the largest group of smartphones owners in America, by far.
On those rare occasions when an ad on Hulu that I must sit through to watch my beloved "30 Rock" hits home, I focus on it. And that's how advertisers can get the attention (the full attention) of Generation C. Frame advertising messages like this: what we're selling is fundamental and necessary to your connected life.
Think of the iPad commercials that suggest in no uncertain terms that if you don't own an iPad, you're missing out on a world of learning, communication, entertainment, and fun. I bought an iPad after two years of thinking it was an unnecessary, overpriced luxury, because the marketing of it as an addictive product that would increase my connected productivity and happiness seeped in through osmosis and I literally looked up from my computer one day and said aloud, "Today I'm buying an iPad. I need it."
It also didn't hurt that my friends on Facebook wouldn't shut up about how much they loved theirs. If they found it to be useful and awesome, I probably would, too. Like many Gen C'ers at the start of a career, I'm extra careful about how I spend my dollars. But if my friends could vouch that the high price tag was worth it, I was sold.
The Nielsen report draws from a broad range of research efforts across Nielsen and NM Incite, including panel data, metered device usage, and surveys, according to a Nielsen representative.
So what do you think? Are you a member of Generation C? Are you as "digitally connected" as the report describes? And do you feel yourself bombarded by ads? Let me know in the comments.
Part 4 Will text messaging destroy the English language?
When the very first text message was sent in 1992, no one realized the influence it would have in the worlds of business, education, security, crime and our social lives. But within a decade of its inception, the world grasped hold of it and ran with it like an Olympian.
Originally, text messages were only intended to be 160 characters or less and are sometimes called SMS (or Short Message Service). When text messaging gained popularity, the vast majority of cell phones only came with a standard phone keyboard. The world would have to wait until about 2001 for Palm to launch the Treo that came with a full QWERTY keyboard layout. Because of this and the limits on characters, abbreviations became necessary. Eventually, a set of common abbreviations became standard to ease understanding. It sort of became its own “language”: text-speak as it’s sometimes called. However, the abbreviations that stemmed from the popularity and widespread use of texting seemed to have made their way into all aspects of written language. The advertising industry has caught on and frequently uses the acronyms and abbreviations of text-speak to catch the attention of younger audiences. Examples can be found in print ads and television ads from the UK to the US to Australia and points in between.
Advertisement is one thing, but formal written language is another: the type that helps kids get the grade at school and gets them jobs and gets them into college. Teachers are racking their brains trying to stop kids today from using text-speak in their formal writing. From a teacher’s point of view, getting their students to understand the difference between spoken language, informal written language and formal written language is an uphill struggle. Even the youngest teachers today did not “grow up” with texting, unlike their students. Even test evaluators who are hired to grade the essay portions of standardized tests often note that text-speak is occasionally slipped into formal essays. Under normal circumstances, these words are considered misspelled words.
While many educators and parents regard texting as the demise of the English language, there are many in the younger generations that see it merely as an extension of the English language, new vocabulary so-to-speak. Many linguists do not believe that text-speak will destroy the English language, that language has a way of evolving and reflecting the changes in society. In 2006, both New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Scottish Qualifications Authority allowed text-speak to be acceptable in the end of year exams. While they discouraged students from using it as much as possible, they allowed it on the basis that they were encouraging students to get their ideas across on paper. While it may technically be allowed, or at least not counted off, many teachers and students alike disapproved of this decision, citing that people judge you depending on how you write. It does have its place, though. Even though it may be perfectly acceptable in informal and casual writing (and texting, of course), text-speak should not be used in formal writing. It also shouldn’t be used if you are communicating (via letter, e-mail, note) with someone in a professional manner (a professor, teacher, city services, job applications, etc.) While it may not destroy the English language or undermine its written standards, it certainly has a few instances where it isn’t widely accepted and should be avoided.
Txt speak doesnt make us write bad its not lyk we cant tell the diff btwn a phone & a class ppr. Sure maybe i spend 60 hrs/wk attached 2 my blackberry @ the hip but so what if my constant txtng costs cuold pay of f a mortgage .. its a free country at least thats what the declaration of independence says i think. or maybe the constitution idk i usually txt in history class. Its less boring then learning about old ppl lol =)
Granted, even the greatest teen text addicts probably haven't murdered the English language quite this badly in their schoolwork. But still, even a few lapses into chat-speak during inappropriate occasions have more damaging consequences than a few docked grade points -- they sabotage the writer's chance to be taken seriously. Even the most intelligent student with a perfect 2400 SAT score can't make up for sloppy grammar with good ideas. Sure, text-speak is convenient and relatively harmless, but only as long as it stays on the phone screen. The bottom line is, if you don't take your writing seriously, no one else will, either.
n e way but seriously lyk txting doesnt interfere w/ my writing @ all. lyk how would i be writing this article if i didnt no English good. lol.
I came across a word I thought was very interesting when I was reading about psychological behavior: habituation. It refers to a creature's knack for responding to certain stimuli without thinking. One example is Pavlov's dog. In a famous experiment, Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov rang a bell right before he fed his dog. The dog eventually began drooling in anticipation of food when he heard the bell ring. This also applies to humans. "Texting" is just another form of habituation. People eventually become so used to typing or writing in text speak that they use it everywhere else without thinking. Did you ever read anything that was written before your grandparents were born? Reading something like Shakespeare can seem like a different language to most modern citizens. So what happened to that form of English?
The simple answer is that language changes with time. It grows, branches out in some places and plants itself in others. It changes with every generation. Here's the point: Texting blurs people's lines of perception. After decades of texting, people may have trouble knowing the difference between "u" or "you." It may seem absurd now, but that's how the mind works. Dialects and ways of writing implant themselves into people's minds through simple exposure. Texting is no different. Texting will naturally grow into another form of English. That's the way it goes.
Part 5 The invention of the mobile phone
Experts hail rapid development of handsets, particularly in internet access – and say there is a lot more innovation to come
guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday 3 April 2013 08.05 BST
Mobile phone technology has come a long way since the first mobile phone call was made 40 years ago – but there is a lot more innovation ahead, according to one expert.
It was on 3 April 1973 that Motorola employee Martin Cooper made a call in New York on a Motorola DynaTAC – dubbed a "brick" due to its size and weight – which was widely regarded globally as the first public mobile phone call.
The device was 9 inches tall, comprised 30 circuit boards, had a talk-time of 35 minutes, and took 10 hours to recharge.
Four decades on, a worldwide telecoms industry with annual revenues of £800bn has grown rapidly based on wide choice, falling prices and an array of technologies, resulting in the average mobile being used to take photos, play music and games, send emails, download maps, watch video clips, all as well as talking and texting.
Mike Short, an expert from the Institution of Engineering and Technology, said Cooper's phone call is the first public call people recognise as being a cellular mobile call.
He said the 10 years following that first call were "very much developmental", with research being carried out in laboratories before services were launched in 1981 in the US.
"Since its first use 40 years ago, the mobile phone has completely changed our lives. The first decade was a research or a 'demonstrator' phase, rapidly followed by analogue networks deployed over 10 years from the early 1980s largely based on carphones and used in business in the developed world.
"This soon led to the digital decade mainly between 1993 and 2003 when consumerisation and globalisation of mobile really took off.
"This led to a further data adoption phase with the arrival of 3G and during 2003 to 2013 access to the internet and the wider use of smartphones became a reality," he said.
The two most significant developments in mobile phone technology have been the widespread availability of devices and their ability to access the internet, Short said.
"In the early days of mobile, consumerisation was not considered. It was made for men in suits in business, whereas consumerisation followed much later.
"And then access to the internet followed much later again. The first smartphones weren't until about five years ago. So the pace of change has actually sped up over the 40 years, particularly in the past 15 to 18 years," he said.
Short expects mobile technology to continue to evolve and said people can expect even more developments in future.
"More changes are expected. The early days of mobile were all about voice, whereas today it's much more about data.
"And the point about data is that we can carry voice calls over the data channel, but in future we'll move towards fuller data services such as video – much more video to video calling, much more screens on the wall in your home, maybe more video television downloaded, catchup TV, that sort of thing.
"So there's a lot more innovation to come, particularly in the data and video worlds," he said.
Mobile phone users will have noticed these changes in the last few years, as phones have become more affordable and sit lightly in the palm of their hand – but innovators are working to enhance these aspects of modern devices further.
Short said: "The cost has already fallen a long way. What tends to happen is you get more functionality per pound spent.
"That would include more memory, that would include more features, that would include more capability to access the internet at higher speeds.
"The weight has dropped dramatically already, but we're seeing, probably this year, the first watch-based phones."
With improvements and changes implemented so frequently, Dr Short said it is hard to know what exactly to expect in the next 40 years, but it is safe to assume millions more people in the world will have access to mobile phones.
"It's very difficult to predict 40 years' time because the pace of innovation is speeding up. I would say that we'll all be mobile, globally, everyone will be mobile.
"I'd also say that we'll be connecting many more machines via wireless mobile technology as well.
"The world of around 7bn devices connected today should be in excess of 70bn connected devices in 40 years' time," he said.
|
By Tania Teixeira |
Martin Cooper may not be a household name, but his invention is familiar to more than half the planet's population who own a mobile phone.
The concept of a handheld phone was his brainchild, and with the help of his Motorola team, the first handset was born in 1973 weighing in at two kilos.
When he stood on a New York street and made the first phone call from a prototype cellular phone, he could not have conceived how successful it would become.
Now a worldwide telecoms industry has sprung up along with a vast array of technologies developed for mobile phones.
$10,000 phone
He told Click that producing the first phone cost Motorola the equivalent of $1m (£650,000) in today's money.
"We had to virtually shut down all engineering at our company and have everybody working on the phone and the infrastructure to make the thing work," he said.
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We joked that 'in the future, when you were born you would be assigned a telephone number and if you didn't answer the phone, you were dead' Martin Cooper |
"Even by 1983, a portable handheld cellular telephone cost $4,000 (£2,600), which would be the equivalent of more than $10,000 (£6,500) today."
Mr Cooper said his team faced the challenge of squeezing thousands of parts into a phone for the first time.
"The industrial designers did a superb job, but by the time the engineers got done we ended up with two and a half pounds.
"A very substantial part of that first phone was in fact battery which weighed four or five times more than an entire cellphone now," he said.
"The battery lifetime was 20 minutes, but that wasn't really a big problem because you couldn't hold that phone up for that long."
Bring freedom
After the phone's production, the bigger obstacle became adapting the small infrastructure, used for car phones at the time, to support mobile phone calls.
"The challenge was to create the network with the promise at that time that we only needed three megahertz of spectrum, the equivalent of five TV channels to cover the world.
|
In the early 80s mobile phones were a luxury that cost thousands of dollars |
He and his team hoped one day everyone would have their own handset.
"In fact we had a joke that said 'in the future, when you were born you would be assigned a telephone number and if you didn't answer the phone, you were dead'.
"We had no idea that in as little as 35 years more than half the people on Earth would have cellular telephones, and they give the phones away to people for nothing."
Handheld phones were originally produced to help doctors and hospital staff improve their communications.
He hoped the devices would help bring safety and freedom to people, but the eventual social implications were beyond his understanding almost four decades ago.
"We had no idea that things like Facebook and Twitter, and all these other concepts, would ever happen."
Modern monsters
A new generation of so-called smartphones have revolutionised the mobile phone industry and changed the way people use them.
The technology in handsets has shifted in focus from voice calls to include other functions such as a portable media player, web browser and camera among others.
By cramming in a whole host of technologies, Mr Cooper believes operators and phone manufacturers have turned the handheld phone into a "monstrosity".
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Mr Cooper believes smartphones will become chips to implant behind the ear |
"The instruction book is now bigger and heavier than the phone itself," he said. "Good technology is intuitive - the cellphone forces you to become an engineer."
But he still enjoys trying out the latest smartphones, because he wants to understand the innovations happening in the phone market.
"You have to immerse yourself into a product and use it in order to really understand it and that's why I have a new cellphone every month or two."
'Slave' implant
As mobile phones go to a fourth generation, with new features in each update, the inventor of the handheld phone said the handset of the future should aim to improve a user's quality of life.
"Technology makes your life better, more convenient, safer, educates you, entertains you, and mostly makes you more productive," said Mr Cooper.
"The future of cellular telephony is to make people's lives better - the most important way, in my view, will be the opportunity to revolutionise healthcare," he added.
"We could not have predicted the annoyance that people have when the phone rings at the opera, but it doesn't take a cellular phone to make people be rude."
In terms of the physical development of mobile phones, which have already shrunk from the size of a brick, he believes future users will be able to dispense altogether with the device.
"The cellphone in the long range is going to be embedded under your skin behind your ear along with a very powerful computer who is in effect your slave".
WHO INVENTED THE CELL PNONE ?
Have you ever pondered over who invented the cell phone? Well, the inventor of the cell phone is named Martin Cooper and he is the man responsible for the generation and development of the very first cell phone.
Although, it was a research team associated with AT&T that first introduced the whole idea of cellular communications in 1947.
Sufficient to say that the very first cell phone ever invented was a far cry from the cell phones of today! Read on to learn all about cell phone inventor Martin Cooper and then read through our loads of cell phone reviews to find the best cell phone!
Martin Cooper grew up in Chicago. He served 4 years in the U.S. Navy. He studied and received his degree in Electrical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Upon graduation he worked for 1 year at a telecommunications company.
Cooper was hired by the Motorola Company in 1954. It was during this employment that he developed the first portable hand held police radio for the Chicago Police Department in 1967. It was after he was promoted to division manager and was assigned a team, that he developed the first hand held phone.
It was April 3, 1973 that the first working prototype of the cell phone was introduced. This was also the day of the first cell phone call being placed by Mr. Cooper. This first prototype was a Motorola Dyna-Tac Phone. The Dyna-Tac cell phone was:
9x5x1.175 inches
Had 30 circuit boards
Weighed 2.5 pounds
A talk time of 35 minutes
A recharge time of 10 hours
Its only features were talk, listen,and dial
The prototype, while sharing the same name with the final product, still needed some work to be commercially ready for the general public. There were still hurdles to overcome with the FCC. Initially, only 40 MHz was allocated for mobile service (in 1974).
In 1975 AT&T applied to the FCC for permission to operate a cell system in the city of Chicago. That license was not granted until March 1977. Upon approval Illinois Bell commenced construction of a cell system, and got it up and running. In 1978 the equipment test phase began.
This phase included:
2000 trial customers
2100 test mobile phones
The use of mobile communications started long before the 1970′s. As early as 1921 mobile radios were utilized by police (in Detroit) nearing 2MHz. The frequencies rose to about 30-40 MHz by 1940. This encouraged the building up of the police systems. It also attracted the following groups to invest in and utilize mobile units:
In 1945 the first public mobile telephone system was instituted. This system had 3 channels with 150 MHZ. By 1947 a public mobile system was installed between New York and Boston. This system introduced the “push to talk” operation.
In 1964, the phone system had developed as far as to do away with the push to talk function. Customers could now dial the numbers themselves without the aid of mobile operators. 1953 ushered in even greater frequencies, by expanding to an 800 MHz region.
The first commercially available phone on the market was the Motorola Dyna-Tac. While using the same name of the prototype, it weighed less. This Dyna-Tac weighed in at 16 ounces. The hefty part was the price. The tag on the Dyna-Tac? $3,5000! Yep, you read it right – the price of the first cell phone was three thousand five hundred dollars!
More than just the high price tags of cell phones have changed over the years. Check out this cool image representation of how the size of cell phones have changed over the years courtesy ofKyle Bean from Design Milk (the Dyna-Tec is the first phone on the left):
Martin Cooper is now the chairman, CEO, and co-founder of a company called Array Communications Incorporated. The main mission of his company is to free the people of the constraints of specific places in which calls can be made, and to do away with the copper wires that constrain them.
Look no more for a company with future goals and aspirations. Array Communications was founded in 1992. It is a wireless technology and systems company. It seeks to make wireless communication more reliable and affordable for everyone.
Array Communications has developed a core adaptive antenna that will increase the basic coverage of any cellular system. They have also created a personal broadband system called i-Burst. This system allows for mobile access to the internet that is affordable for everyone.
Martin Cooper had a vision for the nation. He desired mobile capabilities that freed the individual from the constraints of even the wireled landline phones. The race for mobile took serious strides in the 1960′s and 1970′s when Motorola and Bell vied to translate technology to actual application.
It might have taken 37 years for mobile phones to be commercially available, but now that they are here, they are here to stay. Start reading through reviews of cell phones now!
On April 3rd 1973 the world changed: It was on this day that the cell-phone was born, and the first call was made. The inventor was Martin Cooper and the first device was ten inches long and weighed half a pound. Cooper spoke about the evolution of the cell call: "The whole idea of a phone call changed. It used to be that when you were making a phone call you were calling a place. Now you're calling a person." Cell-phones have come a long way in 40 years, the first one being bigger than some lap-tops are today. The cell is constantly getting a makeover, and companies battle it out to have the greatest, lightest, easiest and most convenient cell on the market: Strange thinking that the first cell cost around $4,000 USD and took 10 hours to charge. But with all changes cooper assured that there is one thing that should remain the same: "The phone is supposed to be your slave; you're not supposed to be the slave of your phone." Video Courtesy Of Reuters
Martin Cooper, who was the lead engineer of the Motorola team that developed the mobile phone, told a privacy conference in Madrid this week that today's phones try to do many things for too many people.
“Whenever you create a universal device that does all things for all people, it does not do any things well,” said the 80 year-old, who made the first wireless call from a busy Manhattan street corner on April 3 1973.
“Our future I think is a number of specialist devices that focus on one thing that will improve our lives,” said Mr Cooper, who has previously criticised the iPhone for being overly complicated and hard to use.
“The first cell phone model weighed over one kilo and you could only talk for 20 minutes before the battery ran out, which is just as well because you would not be able to hold it up for much longer,” added the Chicago-born scientist.
However sales figures suggest that consumers are increasingly seeking phones with a range of features.
In 2007, Nokia's 1100, a straightforward handset nicknamed "Penny", surpassed the 200-million unit mark, making it the world's top-selling gadget. But over the past year sales of smartphones - which have some of the same functions as computers, such as internet access and music players - have risen sharply.
Across England, France, Italy, Germany and Spain, figures compiled by GfK, a market research organisation, suggest that sales of mobile phone handsets decreased by 10 per cent over the last year, but sales of smartphones have increased by 140 per cent from 3,810,097 to 9,129, 868.
Aaron Rattue, business group director at GfK, said that these days smartphones account for close to one in ten phones bought. “The market has more than doubled in size in 12 months,” he said.
Dr Jon Agar, senior lecturer in science and technology studies at University College London, who wrote Constant Touch: A Global History of the Mobile Phone, added that there was little evidence that people were eschewing complicated technology.
“Martin Cooper's assertion flies in the face of current trends, and I see no particular evidence to suggest that the trend towards more 'universal' mobile phones is going to change direction," said Dr Agar.
“Mobiles are far more than mere phones - they have the capabilities and flexibilities of a computer. Designers have made use of these capacities, and will continue to do so. The future of technologies is ultimately in the hands of users - and the vast majority of users have historically been loath to add to the very small number of technologies that we carry around with us.”
But Ben Wood, director of research at CCS Insight, which provides market analysis for the communications industry, suggested that the bid to maximise the number of features available on a phone was easing.
He said there had been an “arms race” amongst mobile phone manufacturers, who were competing to add features to their phones such as increased memory and better cameras. But “that technology arms race is starting to slow down now.
"For example, 12 megapixel cameras are only available at the very high end of the market."
“Mobile phone shops are starting to sell experiences rather than features,” he continued. “They’ll advertise the top five phones with satnav or the top five camera phones.”
Mr Wood also added that there would always be a market for the simpler “talk and text phones”.
"Those products will always exist," he said.