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If you were to choose something in pop culture (for example, a movie, song, product, clothing style, etc.) that serves as an emblem of your generation, what would you choose and why?

I belong to the first generation that never had to use a typewriter, but learning to type is more important today than ever before. Computers, which have been around longer than my parents, belong to the first people to have home access, people who were teenagers in the eighties, but the Internet belongs completely to my generation.

Doing anything without the Internet is impossible. I never make phone calls when it’s easier to talk to five friends simultaneously on Instant Messenger. Life stops when the Internet fails. Homework becomes impossible. Heaven forbid there’s a test tomorrow – chat rooms are great for study sessions. The sheer amount of information online is invaluable for research projects or answering questions like, “What gives a grapefruit its name?” Encyclopedias are forgotten; Diderot’s goal of accumulating all knowledge in one place is realized in the Internet. Everything is On Demand – music, movies, games. My generation cannot conceive of a time when this was not so.

The spread of the Internet is analogous to this generation’s development. When we were younger, accessibility was still developing – dialup was still high-tech. Today, the Internet is ubiquitous. Wireless hot spots allow me to be online anywhere, anytime – parks and restaurants today, and soon it will be inconceivable not to have access in cars. Imagine Boy Scouts bringing laptops camping. There will be nowhere the Internet has not reached.

Similarly, my generation will soon be everywhere. In twenty years we who have no memory of the Soviet Union will be making foreign policy decisions. Things that were science fiction in the sixties are science fact to my generation. Soon, On Demand will be a cultural norm and the wonder of technological capabilities will be ignored. The Internet has become inseparable from my generation and is a metaphor for our coming of age.