Jonathan Faia- Guest Columnist for the Champion Newspaper- How Gen X and Gen Z Navigate the World
How Gen X and Gen Z navigate the world
There’s nothing like good old office water cooler talk to remind you of your age. As my Baby Boomer mentors begin to prep for their thrill rides with retirements, I find myself, like a lot of other Gen X’ers, as the elder statesman in the office. While I try to pontificate on the virtues of hard work and dedication, I find myself met with comments like, “Did you ChatGPT that first?” and “AI can do that for you.” I’m not going to lie; it’s a strange time and it’s easy to feel like a dinosaur. I know the idea is foreign today, but there was a time when we weren’t preoccupied with cell phones fitting in our pockets. It sounds crazy but we searched for the meaning of life in books and life experience because Google hadn’t been invented. Life has come a long way, from card catalogs at the public library to Thomas Guide maps. For those of you who remember the big bang of technology, the phenomenon of dial-up internet service, there are many people out there who have no idea of the labor of love that was the mixtape. Now songs live an unassuming life in the cloud, and you don’t have to wait for the DJ to play them on the radio— everything is just a click away.
Without sounding like the “get off my lawn” guy or the “back in my day” old-timer, a discussion I had at work last week got me thinking. A co-worker who proudly falls into the Gen Z category asked a question that seemed baffling to them, how did we travel before GPS? It turns out that in a workplace that spans multiple generations, there are a few different answers. I was surprised that even some of the older Millennials had trouble answering. You may be surprised that there was a large contention mentioning that MapQuest was the directions originator— you guessed it, an internet-based site. Some people were shocked when I laughed. Then I realized I was one of the few in my office that wasn’t completely reliant on the cloud. My coworker immediately looked over and with a straight face asked, “Well then how did you get around before GPS?"
Looking at it today, I guess it was a legitimate question from someone who has never known life without a device to save the day. One of the 30-somethings jumped in and said, “C’mon who doesn’t remember MapQuest?” I’m not ashamed to say I took full advantage of MapQuest back in the day. It was a great tool for turn-by-turn directions, but I shared that I didn’t have that luxury starting out. My best friend was a Thomas Guide map book. It was heavy, but it was a lifesaver. Thinking back: how many times did a friend tell you to turn left at the stop sign, go down two lights, make a right and then my house is the tan one on the left? When I was young, I don’t know if I ever actually used someone’s address to find them. For those out of area trips, a Thomas Guide map was the key to success. It helped me find everything from the Coliseum in L.A. where I saw the Rolling Stones for the first time in 1989, The forum for my first Laker game, and everything else in between. I’m not going to lie though; you needed a trustworthy co-pilot to make those trips work, but they were so worth it.
Oh, to be a young person exploring again. Looking back now, I remember stopping at the local gas station where the attendant could ramble turn by turn directions to get you anywhere you needed to go. Today there’s not much of a chance of that, the times have just changed.
The world is so overly connected today that the idea of not being able to simply share your location with loved ones and “Ask Siri” when you’ve gotten turned around on your route seems dystopian. But in actuality, if you took a few teens from 1993 and plopped them into 2024 they’d think they were living inside of a sci-fi movie. I grew up in a time when nothing seemed easy and now, I’m living in a time where things have never been easier, so it’s a little confusing to say the least. I don’t carry a Thomas Guide in my car anymore. My car and phone seem to do the trick so I’m not completely out of touch. I look back fondly on my days of exploration and the adventures that came with them. As I get older, I have to say I miss getting a little lost though.
