Death of a Generation

The Baby Boomer age is over, but their legacy burns bright.

Not to be grim, but a whole lot of Baby Boomers are dying off.

A generation born from humankind’s greatest triumph over evil, Baby Boomers were never shy to make an impression. Civil Rights voices demanded to be heard, genre-blending music defied entrenched sonic boundaries and now, as the generational light fades, Boomers will be the first to truly shape how their legacy echoes through time.

Presented by Richard Fry, Pew Research Center has released data detailing that millennials, in the wake the Boomer decline, are now the largest generational group in America. In death, however, Baby Boomers are leaving their impact one last time. They’re creating the largest graveyard humanity has ever seen. A digital graveyard.

BBs are no strangers to navigating the digital seas. 9 in 10 Boomers frequent life logging social media platforms, and even more are elsewhere online, sending emails, uploading photos, commenting on news, and so on. An incredibly detailed imprint of the generation is being created and not just monumental events as was the case back in the day.

Sound, video and photograph have all have covered the past heavily, but what’s worth noting is how much of the beautifully mundane is being documented. Cooking tricks, absent minded photo journalism of trends and styles, off-hand stories posted on forums… These are the type of thing that truly matters when encapsulating the heartbeat of a generation. First hand reflections that are (relatively) free from biases are the Holy Grail of historians today, and will be the Holy Grail for the jet-packed, Facebook digging historians of tomorrow.

With the advent of death tech straight out of Star Trek season one, Boomer digital graveyards are now imagined as something poignantly beautiful. Perhaps they aren’t really graveyards at all. Perhaps museum is more fitting of a term.

Leaving their legacy one last time, Baby Boomers are creating largest digital graveyard humanity has ever seen.

Baby Boomers, forever defined by revolution and progression, will blaze one final trail as their sun sets. The trail of digital immortality. Future generations won’t have to wonder what it was to live alongside their Boomer ancestors. They’ll just have to look.