Most of the population of the world will be urban, all they really need to live well is electric light, hot running water, a sewage hookup, a place to plug in their devices, and mass transportation, or even better, the ability to work from home.

Upscale movers and shakers already live this way in Manhattan, with instant access to entertainment, culture and the arts, education, social connection, professional advancement, and urban diversity. The concepts of property and real estate may be on their way out.

Ironic twist to the American dream, eh? Maybe the hippies were right after all.

I tell my kids to be careful what they post to social media, because that stuff tends to live longer on the internet than they might be comfortable with. It could affect future employment, etc etc. The reality might be the reverse though. Future bosses might look at an empty social media resume as a negative, rather than a positive.

Its a brave new world and one I’m honestly not very comfortable in.

Here’s another trend that’s changing the world: They seem a lot less in love with cars than the last several generations. More of them live in cities with mass transit, of course; but they also have Uber and Lyft, and self-driving vehicles on the horizon. With that in front of them, the car-fetish culture behind them must be looking pretty foolish and destructive. As a not-unintended consequence, they’re bending the arc of petroleum consumption down by the simple power of their choices.

Those two examples show this generation maintaining a decent lifestyle at lower cost. They still have shelter and transportation, and it costs less because they’re learning how to share efficiently; they’re getting smarter. Their ornate online culture I mentioned earlier is another example: They’re richer than we can see in their own milieu.

Xenogeny…unlike the ancestors…and a damn good thing, and about damn time. I’m such a contrarian, but I’m not worried the Millenials will be the end of the world, I’m hopeful they may be the ones to save it.

If they don’t, who will?

One other thing, this client has grandchildren of the millenial generation. I can tell he consults with them a lot and has even brought them into meetings. We are at the start of something new and I think its pretty damn cool.

their short attention spans, their infatuation with technology, their bizarre sexual habits, cultural preferences, political behavior and their peculiar and distributed sense of online community

Funny, those are the things that I find rather adorable about the young’uns. It seems I’m not alone–a minor chord in the Kids These Days Chorus is the odd yet unmistakable affinity between Boomers and Millenials. Not everybody criticizes them.

Opinion surveys consistently paint this cohort as what we would label “liberal”, with their own distinctive twist on it. It’s not just that they’re compatible with me philosophically, but I think they give us hippies some credit for taking the first run at revolution–at major social reform, in more polite terms. They know we mostly failed, but we get a few points for trying. They look at their own futures and they know that things have to change, and change radically. They’ll take it from here, but I’ll be cheering from the sidelines.

You wouldn’t expect me to be bothered by “their infatuation with technology”, of course; but you should expect I’ll connect it to “their peculiar and distributed sense of online community”.

“Well yeah”, he wrote on a “BBS”. On the Internet. In a virtual nursing home, thank you not much, the remnant of a distributed online community. Which part of this do I have to explain to you, of all people?

But I’ll add this: I’ve seen this dichotomy coming, as these Millenials have been building their own parallel culture in cyberspace. I remember a conversation with my brother, a middle school counselor, around the turn of the century. He was concerned, his profession was concerned, about the kids clumped silently at recess, thumbs flying on their primitive texting cellphones. He saw alienation and separation, a social desert; but I saw a cloud of packets swarming around the kids, knitting them closely together in a realtime shared community (didn’t he wonder who was on the other end of each texted conversation?). A place that, for the first time in human history, the kids could be sure of having all to themselves, away from the grownups.

That was fifteen years ago. They have a rich culture now, built in cyberspace, and much of it is invisible to us.

I can only claim the ability to see it because I’m one of the plumbers who keeps their pipes flowing. But flow they do.

ER, dude, I think you’re getting old if you can criticize the kids for “their bizarre sexual habits”. Oh lordy lordy, have you forgotten the Free Love, and the Summers of Love, one after another?

Now, you may be referring to that “gender fluidity” thing. There, especially, we old farts should keep quiet. But I have to admit one thing: Miley Cyrus, their fluidity icon, has managed to achieve something extraordinary: I don’t want to see her breasts any more. I’ve seen them enough. For a while there, every other clickbait headline had the phrase “Miley Cyrus’s breasts!” in it. Stop, Miley, just stop!

Did I mention I’m an uncle of Millenials? It’s true, so maybe I’m prejudiced. One niece has a degree in anthropology, and is planning to go all the way to her doctorate. The other is a recent mechanical engineering graduate, and just went to work for the Pentagon. One nephew is working more than full time as a skilled welder. The other nephew is still trying to figure out, but I have hope for him–he’s sincerely seeking. The point is, the Millenials I know are pretty impressive individuals. They’re creatures of their times, trying to navigate an economy and a world very different from the one you and I grew up in, ER.

Their world is harder. I feel for them.

“This device serves no purpose.” — V’Ger

Not sure I can answer the questions without knowing the criticism Boomers have for Xers. Throw them out here and I’ll answer.

My own criticisms of millenials is this:

Grow up already and stop living at home with your parents.

Fair? probably not. Skyrocketing tuition costs and lack of jobs as the millennials came online into the workforce meant that most of them have struggled to find work. We are just now recovering from the jobs half of the problem which is leaving a lost generation of kids who were skipped over and don’t have a resume to compete with younger millennials.

Pokemon? Seriously? You are a grown ass adult!

Fair? of course. Next question!

Ever heard of E-mail? Its fast, its reliable, no I won’t snapchat!

Fair, I don’t know. E-mail was the new thing as I became a professional, and it is heavily relied on in business. But it isn’t very social for nonbusiness stuff. I’ve tried sending stuff to my kid’s e-mail addresses and they will never see it. I am forced to use facebook and texting. I draw the line at snapchat though.