Early Days of the Computer and finally the Internet

Reading this essay was a doozy. I feel the impact of it's nostalgia in a deep place because I'm a number of years older than the writer of this essay. I was nine years old when our family got our first computer in 1989. It was mainly DOS, as far as I can remember. I don't know what my dad used the computer for, it lived on our dining room table. My dad had actually bought a few computers on a trip we made as a family to Hong Kong and his goal wasn't to keep the computers but to sell them. But for a few months, I got to log on to the computers and write commands like DIR for directory and probably some wide, thin floppy disks with an Olympics game. Fast forward, computers were around us, many of my parents friends worked for IBM in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and soon those same family friends would take on jobs at Intel, Pentium, Dell, and other up and coming technology companies of the time. We were a technology curious family, but the way our finances played out, we were middle adopters, not early but not the last ones either. When we got our first official computer, it was the era of Windows 95. AOL ads were everywhere, and we all clogged up the house landline by quickly logging on to the dial up and researching pictures of my favorite Italian football players.

I write about these earliest experiences because I do feel the nostalgia of the world before internet connection became an extension of our hands and eyes.

Computers became commonplace for research and life during my first round of college years. I wanted to speak my truth online, even back then, there was a desire to scream into the void, into this inter-connected network of pages and ideas and people delving into the void together. The author here is a digital native who is about maybe 10 years younger than me, so by the time they were in elementary, middle and high school, new systems for digital connection sprouted up every few years to meet the budding demands of young millennials who were growing up as digital natives. I grew up fascinated by the promise and ideals of technology, but I was also extremely weary of how badly it seemed CEOS and Investors wanted to make money off of our human desires. In this essay, the author speaks of something I experienced also in the mid-aughts - I witnessed how Facebook came on the scene, so pristine, so sterile, the opposite of MySpace, Facebook was the digital realms version of the all white outfits all Nora Ephron wore, it was the beige and white living room with the single Live, Laugh, Love placard. It was also only for select college students when it came out, making me, a 25 year old at the time, feel like I was too old, too uncool, and possibly too working class to be on an app as fancy as Facebook. It's laughable now to see what FB has become, an ethical nightmare. During those early days, I remember a lot of conversations about how Facebook would become more than just a social connector but an actual money maker. Would FB start selling ads? Charge membership fees? Nobody knew, but the murmurings were there. A social enterprise cannot alone sustaine itself, the pundits would say. An app needs to make money, how would FB do it? Well, we know now, FB has turned out to be a collective nightmare in so many ways, and yet, many of us have photos and albums that span parts of out lives, friendships that span space and time. Just like the rest of the social media companies, pieces of our lives live on these proprietary servers. The memories might be holding us hostage.

Here's a paragraph from the essay that I found compelling: " It’s important to remember, too, that Facebook rolled out first at Harvard, and then at other Ivy League and otherwise prestigious schools before it opened to state colleges and, later, high schools; exclusivity was clearly a tactic in the early development stage, and this led to its image as a high-class, elite platform. Parents, who were often spurred by the moral panics (often racialized) surrounding inappropriate social media use on the anarchic Myspace, began to view Facebook as a cleaner, less seedy alternative for their children. As with many consumer products, Facebook’s aspirational bent aligned with users’ desires to achieve, or retain, professional class status. In choosing Facebook, these users not only relinquished the creative flexibility of Myspace, they also, we now know, forfeited their privacy."

I tried to move to a farm and move away from technology, but in reality, I have realized that tech is all around us and if we want a more ethical world, we have to speak the language of tech to make sure this is a system that is for everyone. Not just loser billionaires who need to stop abusing workers and consumers, and get a life.

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Umnia Khan

Final Essay

Dr. Grajeda

December 8, 2011

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When Nirvana overthrew Michael Jacksonʼs Dangerous off the billboard charts in January 1992, the term “Alternative” arrived fully in the lexicon of modern rock and mass media, and the people buying these records and engaging in the ʻalternativeʼ were suddenly a new, and potentially huge demographic. Labels helped the media define this new subculture: alternative, grunge, slackers, etc, but in the attempts to cash in on this new cultural gold rush, much of the subtlety of this spirit was overshadowed. ʻGeneration X became ʻa convenient label to define any youth culture activity that bordered, however timidly, on the unconventional.ʼ (Tate 2007) The terms of the culture regurgitated, commodified and sold, began to vacate any meaning, and by the mid-90s, the ʻmembersʼ of Generation X were left as yesterdayʼs news.

To follow the mediaʼs trajectory of this subcultural phenomenon, however, would be insufficient. To understand the notion of Generation X, one must situate the meanings behind the term historically, and take a closer look at what this particular term defines. Postmodern theories are also helpful in gauging the extent of Generation Xʼs commitment (intentional or otherwise) to push the limits of popular culture. Also, it is very important to consider Generation Xʼs relationship with commercial culture, as this is a group really oscillates between the binaries of margin/center; the nature of the subculture is independent and self marginalized, yet it is exactly this aspect, the DIY punk style, which is so compelling to the mainstream, and thus, a lucrative endeavor for any Gen Xer who cannot find and more often does not want a regular job. As Paul Willis states, ʻCommerce appears twice in the cultural argument, as that which is to be escaped from and that which provides the means and materials for alternatives.ʼ (Willis, 1990). Lest the discussion ends on a simple consumption/production binary, It is vital, to paraphrase Willis, to state there is there is a symbolic and creative effort contained in consumption and this is where Generation X faced many challenges in understanding their role as purveyors of the ʻalternative.”

Contrary to popular media reports in the 90s, the term Generation X was first used in the early 1950s by photo-journalist Robert Capa, who wanted to do a photographic essay on global youth turning 20 at the halfway mark of the century. He was specifically interested in this group because there was a strong possibility they would see much of the 20th century, and possibly live until the year 2000. Capa explained, “We named this unknown generation, The Generation X, and even in our first enthusiasm we realized we had something far bigger than our talents and our pockets could cope with.” (Ulrich, 5). The photographs eventually appeared in the United Kingdom in an issue of Picture Post, and eventually in the United States (after editorial differences with McCalls) in Holiday magazine. This was the generation who had seen the ravages of WWII, and Capa specifically chose the letter “X” as a placeholder for something unknown, a blank which was yet to be filled in. About a decade later, in 1964 the term would be resurrected as the title of Charles Hamblett and Jane Deversonʼs book Generation X . Unlike Capaʼs global approach, this book looked specifically at the British youth subculture (focusing on the mod and rocker subcultures)and concerned itself primarily with the issues of “social and scientific acceleration” facing British youth. It is interesting to note that Hamblett and Deverson ʻidentify Generation X as the first to confront one of the hallmarks of late capitalist, postmodern culture: the increasing rapidity with which “things, people [and] ideas get used up” and discarded.ʼ (Ulrich, 10) The next instance of the use of the term was by none other than BIlly Idol, who (as legend has it) saw the title of Hamblett and Deversonʼs book on his motherʼs bookshelf and appropriated it as the name of his mid 70s punk band, Generation X. In 1975, New York musician Richard Hell (with his band, the Voidoids) took the idea of the term to a linguistic level in the lyrics of his song, “Blank Generation” where he literally leaves a blank in the lyrics to signify the ʻfill in the blankʼ uniqueness of his generation. Often misinterpreted as negative, he later explained the positive potential of the lyrics, which if sung as an anthem allowed the listener to fill in the blank as he/she chooses. Once again, there was the notion that the generation was undefined, available to be whatever one wanted to be. Defined by nothing, by the absence of any previously set meaning, liberated the opportunity to create new meaning.

Two decades later, youth in the 90s were described as a generation who ʻreached adulthood in the absence of a theme, and even with a theme of absenceʼ (Rushkoff 1994). This idea, reinforced in Couplandʼs 1991 novel, which resurrected the term Generation X, this time into major media spotlight. Couplandʼs novel, however, was based on the last chapter of Paul Fussellʼs Class: A Guide through the the American Status System (1983), entitled “The X Way Out.” In this final chapter, Fussell described the Category X, individuals who navigate the cultural terrain with “insolence, intelligence, irony and spirit”. Fussell, in a departure from other notions of “X” being attached to a particular generation, argued that “ ʻXʼ people are better conceived as belonging to a category than a class because you are not born an X person...you earn X-personhood by a strenuous effort of discovery in which curiousity and originality are indispensable. And in discovering that you can become an X person you find the only escape from class.ʼ (Fussell 1983). This brings an interesting point of inquiry regarding the term Generation X. Though Fussell uses the term “Category X”, the premise of the “X” as serving the unknown is the same, however, Fussell, in speaking about terms of class unhinges “X” as a demographic (i.e. a group of people born between a particular time period) and places it more as a choice, which allows for more nuance and potentiality in the notions of the “blank” and “undefined” identities mentioned above. According to Ulrich, the many uses of the term Generation X, particularly since the 1960s, are connected ʻwith subcultural negationist practices and their often conflicted relationship to mainstream consumer cultureʼ. (Ulrich 2003) This is an interesting point of debate between the idea of Generation X as a demographic (as it was perceived in the early 90s) and Generation X as a subculture (which would place it in a continuum of actions/reactions against the dominant popular culture of the time). Along the demographic line, Neil Howe and William Strauss explored the specifics of what they termed the ʻ13th Generationʼ in their (LIST YEAR) book, Generations. Here, youth born between 1961 and 1981 were considered the 13th generation of Americans who have known the American flag. They believed this group was born during a specific ʻspiritual awakeningʼ in the American cultural landscape, and thus, their actions in the culture sphere will always be reflections of their unique worldview, based on the spirit of the mid-late 20th century.

Itʼs possible that every decade since WWII has produced itʼs own generation of undefinable young people who (fall under these categories), the Beats in the 1950s, the mods and rockers in the early 60ʼs and the counter culture movement of the late 60ʼs, the punks in the 70ʼs, no definitive historically popular group in the 80ʼs (except the yuppies on the opposite side of the spectrum), and then finally an amalgamation of sorts in the nineties, finally called what they have been all along, an undefined group existing along and outside the mainstream, Generation X. It can argued the “X” moniker fit precisely because this “generation” did not have anything they were known to be fighting or pushing against. Although the U.S. did engage in war in 1990, during Operation Gulf Storm, there was no longer a draft to fight against, and perhaps the re- engagement in warfare, something that was fought by countercultural activists in the late 60s led young people in the 90s to feel the futility in fighting the “machine”, at least directly. The fact that the ʻgeneration xʼ moniker has lasted over the course of (so far) five decades, it is worthwhile to pursue further studies on the various groups that came under this undefined term over the course of those decades to understand what the ʻundefinedʼ is in fact resisting/reacting/responding to in our postmodern, increasingly technological and perpetually war induced culture. John Ulrich writes, ʻThe term “Generation X” marks precisely this paradoxical borderline status (inside/outside, within and against mainstream), with “X” capturing the dual sense of negation and freedom and “generation” signifying a kind of hyperbolic assertion of subcultural, rather than demographic, solidarity.

An interesting aspect of Generation X in the 1990s is how individuals sought a kind of power yet eschewed any sense of privilege which would associate it with the boomer generation or the corporate yuppies of the 80s. A prime example is Kurt Cobain, who wanted to make a living playing music, most likely wanted to make a good living making music, yet resisted the idea of being privileged by his newfound status as the rock music reviver. Here, it may serve to look into the historical underpinnings that created the worldview of this particular group. There is reason to believe by the 90s, the 18-34 youth demographic, as often understood by data compilers, had witnessed (or experienced the repercussions of) the Vietnam War, Watergate, the bi-polar make-up of the world during the Cold War, rising gas prices, television shows like All in the Family and Sanford & Son, the haplessness of having a nice president like Jimmy Carter, the hostage crisis in Iran and a early hint of terrorism, the introduction of crack and heroin in the streets, cocaine in the suburbs, fear of AIDS, Iran-Contra, Reagonomics, the increasing prevalence of two income households, high rates of divorce, emergence of terms like latchkey kids, the stock market crash of 1987, and the ubiquitous 80s dominance of hairspray, spandex, and pants with holes carved out for the butt-cheeks (a la David Lee Roth and Cher). During this time, it also became a lot easier to not leave the house - the birth of the home computer, video games, cable television, VCRs, walkmans, music television, and eventually the rise of the internet (which initially was the domain of the nerds), in addition to increased access to higher education (especially amongst women) led to a more interiorized, introspective group of young people who had experienced a world that only increased in fear, paranoia and injustice. Standards of living had been on a steady decline as globalization allowed for cheap labor in developing countries, and American jobs, once plentiful and stable were now reduced to service sector McJobs, which were not suited to a generation who valued their independence. Across the board, the culture industries were momentarily silenced, as they no longer knew what worked, and bands like Nirvana, auteur filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and the quiet but steady success of Gen X writers like Don DeLillo, Zadie Smith and Dave Eggers began to set-up a new landscape where the value was placed on personal vision, an open intertextual dialogue, and a brand of self- consciousness that belonged uniquely to a generation that had not come around to the belief that technology would save the world (an idea associated with the demographic generation following ʻXʼ - the ʻYʼ and Millennial generations who never knew a world without a home computer/an or internet.). By many accounts, this generation was not interested in saving the world, as much as it was interested in saving itself, as illustrated in Couplandʼs novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, where narrator and his friends drop out of their urban lifestyles in Toronto, Tokyo and Los Angeles to live life in the southern desert of California, simply to be themselves. In reality though, this group was both traditional and transgressive. They did not opt out of the world - they chose to operate within the mainstream, but with a conviction for creative, symbolic effort, as evidenced in Chris Wilchaʼs attempt to do something meaningful while working for Columbia House. In his case, simply documenting the nature of corporate machines was enough to tell a message, which, did not make his job any better, allowed for him to make the experience not only worthwhile, but an important teaching tool. Many young people in the 90s were highly educated, many like Wilcha with degrees in the liberal arts and humanities, and if not in a traditional academic setting, many purposefully educated themselves in their field of choice -- Kurt Cobain (though unwilling prophet of 90s alternative) brought a renewed interest for punk in the popular press, Quentin Tarantino was known to be an encyclopedia of film knowledge, Dave Eggers (though famous later in the time line) had to drop out of college. Amongst this group, there was a general desire for minutiae, the need to know obscure bands, films, TV shows and arts which otherwise would be destined for the junkyard in a world operated by elite interests, bottom line stock members, and boardroom executives.

Here is where the discussion of the “X” subculture gets interesting. Though Dick Hebdige calls the term ʻpostmodernʼ problematic, because it has taken the job of being a catch-all, a buzzword, it is helpful to understand the Xers in relation to postmodernist theories because that can provide the road to understanding how this ʻalternativeʼ subculture was able to reign as popular music in the early 90s, and and how the push/ pull effect of commodification affected the Gen Xers, ultimately leading to the ultimate commodity fetishism of the subculture by the mid 90s. Hebdige continues to write in his classic Subculture: Meaning of Style, ʻpunk clothing and insignia could be bought mail- order by the summer of 1977ʼ (Hebdige, 1979) and nearly 15 years later, the fishnet stockings, leather and metal studs were replaced with a frenzied sales of Doc Martens, flannel shirts and what became termed as “Heroin Chic” with designers like Calvin Klein jumping on the “grunge” bandwagon by 1992. This circle describes what happens when a subculture strikes a chord: everyone wants to participate, and as long as there are producers who can give consumers the experience they are seeking, the commodity sphere is complete. The subsequent difference in the 90ʼs was the total embrace and commodification of the “alternative” music culture, which though it occurred in the earlier epochs of punk subculture in the 70s and counterculture of the 60s, did not command the scale and full societal immersion which occurred in the 90s. Punk and counterculture was re-dressed for heavy rotation play on MTV, until the notion of ʻpunkʼ was degraded to punk ʻboyʼ bands like Blink-182 and Sum-41, aimed at selling safety pins and hair dye to suburban 12 year olds. Of course, this behavior is to be expected by the culture industries. The consumption is not necessarily a bad thing. Paul Willis argues that ʻInterpretation, symbolic activity and creativity are part of consumptionʼ and he goes on to say, ʻIndeed, some aspects of ʻprofanityʼ in commercial artifacts may be liberating and progressive, introducing the possibility of the new and the socially dynamic.ʼ (Willis, 1990) This is precisely where Generation X fit in. They are a group that has consumed a healthy amount of pop culture, and uses this information to decipher meaning and creation in their own symbolic forms. Creation and consumption allows for transmitting what came before and relaying the symbolic information to consumers who are hungry for meaning outside the machine. Fussell writes: ʻX people constitute something like a classless class. They occupy the one social place in the U.S.A. where the ethic of buying and selling is not all powerful.ʼ For this group, buying and selling of art is imperative, not necessarily for material gain, but more importantly because it allows for the access and continuation of postmodern practices for new audiences and creators.

In its dedicated intertextual, inter-racial, inter-cultural practices, the alternative ʻXʼ subculture continues in the thread of what are generally agreed upon postmodern practices. MTV was a pioneer in accessing this trend, labeling its ʻalternativeʼ rock program Post Modern MTV, in August 1988. The show played bands like Pixies, REM, Joy Division, Talking Heads, Siouxsie and the Banshees, U2 and The Cure. The success of Nirvana and brought ʻalternativeʼ to the forefront and resurrected the music of many postmodern artists from the 80s, leading to many new “alternative rock” radio stations dedicating air time to many otherwise forgotten bands from the 80s. In terms of intertextuality, Nirvana covered musicians like David Bowie, the Vaselines, Leadbelly, Velvet Underground, Meat Puppets, the Melvins, the Clash, the Wipers, and Devo to name some famous examples, and Kurt Cobain always referenced his various influences, from the Beatles to the Pixies and Sonic Youth, in addition to the bands listed above. This open declaration of influences exhibits the intertextuality common in postmodern music, and once again places Nirvana in the continuum of modern and postmodern music. Andrew Goodwin makes an excellent point in his essay Popular Music and Postmodern Theory,

“Within the field of contemporary popular music, the processes of selection, exclusion, celebration and denigration are used by critics, fans, and the musicians themselves in ways that continue to sustain the operation of forms of cultural capital. In particular there remains a tendency to identify as ʻseriousʼ those acts who subvert and undermine the conventions of the pop song, often in ways that are classically modernist.ʼ (Goodwin, 1991)

This recognition by a relatively new band, and the dedication to an authenticity in music that seeks to exist somewhere not completely inside the generic mass music machine, helped promote a desire to seek original musical artists who blurred the line between art and mass consumption. Goodwin continues,

ʻ...for postmodern pop remains in most cases either an explicitly high cultural form, or a pop form constructed in at least partial opposition to the ʻinauthenticʼ popular culture (TV, advertising, mainstream pop).ʼ (Goodwin, 1991)

Authenticity, though not the big buzzword in the early 90s, played an important role in the development of the Generation X identity. If considered part of a cosmic continuum of young people who choose not to participate in the mainstream efforts of domination, the subcultural youth of the 90s did not seek to change the world. Continuing in the vein of Robert Capaʼs 20-somethings at the turn of the century, Gen Xerʼs were not seeking to change the world and yet they were not very comfortably with the status quo. They are not remembered as freedom fighters or activists, in fact, often they are denigrated by the use of the term “slackers” after the Richard Linklater movie of the same name. The essence of this ambivalent atitude towards changing the world or making a mark was largely due to an undercurrent belief that real resistence was ineffectual because there is always a commodity component and the resistance is co- opted before it can even begin. It can be argued the true place of change was internal - without major wars or outward civil rights inequalities, Generation X dealt with questions of self, sexuality, race, drug culture, commodification, happiness. The superficial integration of the ʻalternativeʼ in the early 90s was never seen as permanent, as questions of selling out to “the man” were always at the forefront of the postmodern view. The group, though labeled and appropriated by the media, never lost its sense of being undefined. They were not yuppies, not hippies, not punks, not alternative, not activists, not reactionist, not rebels, not revolutionaries. They were only themselves, a blank slate, representing something new and undefined, and open to whatever they could become.

On April 8th 1994, the poster child of “alternative” youth culture was found dead in his home by what appeared to be a self-inflicted gun shot wound. Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of the band Nirvana had risen to a dizzying level of fame upon the 1991 release and unexpected success of their second album, Nevermind. Dead at the age of 27, Cobain joined the likes of other counterculture musical heroes who had come to similar end, Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin and Jimi Hendrix headlined the ʼ27 Clubʼ and now, the 1990s had sacrificial lamb of their own. The public outpouring over Cobainʼs death, however was different. It was almost personal, as though his death symbolized the defeat of the emergent ʻalternativeʼ culture, reinforcing the notion that what exists on the margins cannot be brought into the center limelight without eventually combusting from the price of being in the center: everyone wants a piece, and if sold as a commodity in a free world, everyone can buy a piece. In this scenario, according to the capitalist zeitgeist, everybody wins, the producers and the consumers. However, for young people emerging in the 1990s, this mode of thinking was problematic. Labeled Generation X by the media, after the title of Douglas Couplandʼs 1991 novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, this group was identified as ambivalent, painfully unambitious, adolescent and even naive in their desire to opt out of “normal” societal functions such as corporate jobs and 30 year home mortgages. The media did not sympathize with the lack of jobs available for many of the recent college graduates, nor was there any relation found between Generation Xʼs indifference (often mentioned as Gen X apathy) to world politics and the state of the worldʼs over-strategized geopolitical affairs (which often resulted in wars for the sake of democracy).

And so again, 30 years later, we are yet at the juncture of a new generation, the generation after x and y. Gen Z born in the late 90s and early 2000s, toddlers dancing thier first steps to Britney Spears, NSYNC and the dawn of school shootings after the historic Columbine Shooting in April 1999. This generation, like Gen X before them, grew up under the shadow of the forever wars: Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, the 2008 recession, the world of the iphone, instagram, selfies, streaming, Ferguson, gay marriage and the first black president who turned out to be the Drone King. This generation is a new chance for us to not fuck it up.

Works Cited

1. Frith, S., 1991, ʻThe good, the bad, and the indifferent: defending popular culture from the populistʼ. Diacritics, 21(4)

2. Goodwin, A., 1991, ʻPopular music and postmodern theoryʼ, Cultural Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 174-88

3. Willis, P., 1990, Common Culture, Buckingham: Open University Press, pp. 1-29.

4. Hebdige, D., 1979, Subculture: Meaning of Style

5. Ulrich, John M. A, and Andrea L. Harris. Genxegesis: Essays on Alternative Youth (sub)culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press/Popular Press, 2003. Print