Cities

Ten Most Significant Cultural Trends of the Last Decade

by Andy Crouch

Editor's Note: Because there is no year 0, a decade runs from 01/01 - 12/10 . As we enter the second decade of the second millennium AD, Q is pausing to consider the most significant changes and cultural goods of the last ten years. Other contributors to this series include Margaret Feinberg, Brett McCracken and Josh Jackson.
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Ten years is a very short time. As I reflect on the world in 2011 compared to the world in 2001, I’m less struck by how much has changed than by how much is the same. Terror, war, new technology, economic boom and bust, surprising political triumphs followed by sudden changes of fortune—yup, sounds like the 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, and 1960s to me. It’s almost axiomatic that any change big enough to shape an entire nation or society happens in long waves spanning generations, not a mere ten years.

Indeed, when I reflect on the most significant developments of the never-adequately-named 2000s (the aughts? the aughties? the naughties?), it seems that almost all of them were well under way in 1999, or even 1989. At the same time, in the last ten years some long-wave trends accelerated in notable ways. Acceleration matters. In one sense, walking, riding a horse, driving a car, and traveling by plane are simply variations on the millennia-old human theme of mobility, tracing back literally to the earliest signs of our restless race. But the difference between five miles an hour and 500 miles an hour is not just a quantitative matter of speed, but a qualitative change in the horizons of possibility.

Here are ten significant trends in North American culture that accelerated dramatically in the 2000s—almost always for better and for worse at the same time.

One | Connection

By far the most significant acceleration was in our technologies of connection. In June 2000, 97 million mobile phone subscribers existed in the United States; in June 2010, the number rose to 293 million. Urban and suburban Americans swim in a sea of WiFi (sitting in my living room on a quiet side street I can see 8 wireless networks)—and in the middle of Nebraska, you can get online at McDonald’s.

What did not take off in the 2000s was “virtual reality”—a world constructed entirely of disembodied bits, populated by avatars and existing only in the realm of the ideal. As the 2000s ended, the virtual-reality world Second Life was on virtual life support.

Instead, we used technology to reinforce our embodied relationships. Facebook was the highest trafficked website in 2010 (US subscribers in 2000: zero; in 2010: 116 million). Look at your Facebook friends—unless you are a celebrity, the vast majority of them are people you have met in the flesh. Same with the recents on your cell phone. Rather than replacing embodied connection, our devices supplemented and extended it, an electromagnetic nervous system to match the physical infrastructure of transport built in the twentieth century.

Two | Place

Therefore, oddly enough after a decade of wild growth in invisible telecommunications, place mattered more in 2010 than it did in 2000. Travel and transport remained basically flat throughout the decade. Total vehicle miles driven, while an impressive 3 billion miles in 2010, were only up from 2.7 billion miles in 2000, a period during which the population increased from 288 to 318 million—meaning the average American drove less in 2010 than in 2000. At 9:45 tomorrow morning there will be roughly 4,500 commercial flights in the air, just as there were on 9:45 the morning of 11 September 2001—no change despite a decade of economic and population growth. And mobility, the hallmark of twentieth-century United States culture, declined throughout the decade and reached a post-war low in 2010, with less than 10% of American households changing their address.

At the Q gathering in 2010, urbanologist Richard Florida observed that young adults meeting one another no longer ask, “What do you do?” They ask, “Where do you live?” More and more people will change careers in order to stay in a place—connected to family, friends, and local culture—than will change place to stay in a career. The 20th-century American dream was to move out and move up; the 21st-century dream seems to be to put down deeper roots. This quest for local, embodied, physical presence may well be driven by the omnipresence of the virtual and a dawning awareness of the thinness of disembodied life.

Three | Cities

Cities, the places where both connection and local presence can thrive simultaneously, had an extraordinary renaissance in the 2000s. The revival of American cities was underway already in 2000, but it reached its full flowering by 2010. Of course not every single American city flourished in the last decade, but those of us old enough to remember New York, Chicago, Atlanta, or Houston circa 1990—not to mention Portland, Columbus, or Phoenix—can only be astonished at the way economically fading and often crime-ridden city centers revived as centers of commerce and creativity.

The challenges often associated with urban life, meanwhile, began a movement to the suburbs that may well accelerate in the 2010s. The frontiers of justice, mercy, compassion, and reconciliation are now in the suburbs—places where connections are harder to sustain and local culture is thinner and less appealing than the cities. Some suburban environments will reinvent themselves, but multi-generational poverty, crime, and gangs that provide a substitute social network where others have failed are already as common in Westchester County as in the Bronx, in the San Fernando Valley as in Compton. The really radical and difficult place to raise a family by 2020 will be . . . the suburbs.

[See Tim Keller's Q talk on "Grace and the City" and Joel Kotkin's on "The Future of the Suburbs."]

Four | The End of the Majority

Everywhere in the 2000s, cultural majorities collapsed. Predominantly black neighborhoods became half Hispanic. White rural communities saw dramatic immigration from Asia and Latin America. City centers became internationalized. Mercados and Asian food markets sprung up in suburbia and in exurbia (drive down a thoroughfare well beyond the 285 beltway in Atlanta, and you will see shop signs in a dozen different languages). White Americans were still a bare majority of the population by the end of the decade, but in delivery rooms they were already only a plurality (the largest of many minorities).

We are all minorities now. Evangelical Christians are a minority, as are liberal Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists. The establishment of Will Herberg’s 1955 book Protestant—Catholic—Jew is now a minority. Barack Obama is a minority, but so is Sarah Palin. Republicans are a minority—so are Democrats, and so are independents.

There may never have been a society in history that was as culturally, religiously, and politically diverse as the United States is today—except perhaps the Roman Empire. There are few models for how such a diverse community can sustain itself, and plenty of models for failure. Perhaps the most hopeful model is a community that arose at the edges of that Empire and eventually spread to its heart, among whom there was neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female.

Five | Polarity

We used the technologies of connection and the commitment to place to sort ourselves into more and more tightly homogenous subcultures, refuges both virtual and real from the heterogeneity of our society. Republicans became more Republican; Democrats became more Democratic. Salon lost ground to the Huffington Post—CNN lost ground to Fox News. A president elected on the premise of unity presided over two years of ever-sharper rhetoric of division and seemed unable to change the game. Hipsters got more extremely hip. The Reformed became truly Reformed.

It was not at all clear, as polarization accelerated, that anyone could convince any large number of Americans that they had anything crucial in common.

Six | The Self Shot

When movie directors in the 2030s are trying to convey in a single glance that their scene is set in the 2000s, they will use the self shot—the self-portrait shot from a digital camera or cell phone held by one hand extended away from the subject. We look out at our own hand, perhaps squeezing another friend into the frame, composing our face in a smile or a laugh. We are shooting ourselves.
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The visual presentation of the self accelerated in the 2000s. Previous generations saw themselves most often in mirrors. But mirrors do not show us what others see—they show us a mirror image with right and left reversed. The difference is subtle but real, and symbolic of a deeper reality. Now most 20-year-olds have seen thousands of images of themselves as others see them. In the 2000s we learned to shape and groom our image for public consumption. Body modification—augmentation, reduction, smoothing, straightening, whitening, tanning, not to mention tattooing—became normative. The closing years of the decade gave us the word “manscaping.” Enough said.

Seven | Pornography

Underneath it all was porn. Pornography is as old as visual art, but in the 2000s it was more ubiquitous than it had been since the ancient Greeks erected herms at every crossroads. Superimposed on every image of our own bodies, and the bodies of our friends and lovers, were the idealized bodies of pornography and its close cousin, advertising and popular culture, which differ from porn only in not consummating the voyeuristic impulses they arouse.

And yet as omnipresent as porn was, it remained underground—a subject of shame even among the most secular and urbane. Our culture seemed to draw back from the brink at the same time as it plunged into the abyss. The bestselling memoir was titled Eat, Pray, Love, not, Eat, Pray, F@#k. No one really wanted the culture of porn to become a runaway train. But neither was anyone sure how to stop it.

Eight | Informality

Men untucked their shirts. Billionaires wore jeans. The most powerful CEO in America was universally known as “Steve.” Indeed, informality was now a sign of privilege—only low-status workers wore uniforms. And the ubiquity of the camera meant that everyone—including celebrities, politicians, business leaders, people who in past decades would have been insulated by privilege—was caught off guard, meaning that status now accrued to those who could be most artfully informal, rather than those who could protect themselves from view.

Most institutions, with layers of tradition and deference accumulated over years, struggled to stay relevant to an informal culture. Tie-wearing network news anchors were eclipsed by cable-channel comedians with open collars. Journalistic codes of integrity and objectivity looked simply foolish next to the raw data of The Smoking Gun and Wikileaks. Marriage, with its vows and formal attire, became for many young people a distant aspiration far on the horizon, while cohabitation became the accepted gateway to adult relationships. A crippling blow was dealt to the cultural legitimacy of the oldest institution of all, the Roman Catholic Church, not by sexual abuse per se (almost all the cases reported had happened at least a decade earlier) but by the realization of how its hierarchy had covered up the scandal. The most informal and anti-institutional demographic cohort in a century, Generation X, moved uneasily and unsteadily into adulthood—symbolized neatly by its most celebrated religious movement, the emerging church, refusing to institutionalize at all and naming the leader of its most prominent organization a “coordinator.”

Nine | Liquidity

Wealth was ever more disconnected from real assets. Countries that pumped one particular liquid from the ground acquired vast resources of sovereign wealth that went looking for high returns. The most storied and prominent financial firm, Goldman Sachs, ended its century-long system of limited partnership and become a publicly traded company. Hedge funds made billions by trading not shares, but shares of bets on the future price of shares (and derivatives far more exotic). Your mortgage, once the most boring and staid of financial instruments, was sliced and diced into tranches of risk.

Money sloshed around the globe like quicksilver (the title of Neal Stephenson’s epic 2003 novel about the earliest moments of modernity). It sloshed beyond the borders of nations, of national regulators and politicians, quickly breaching the levees of international financial standards like Basel 1 (replaced by Basel 2, soon to be replaced by the soon-to-be-swamped Basel 3). Anyone unwilling to swim in the sea of liquidity drowned (or, as one Wall Street executive said, as long as the music was playing you had to keep dancing). As money sloshed, prices of oil, food, housing, and labor spiked, then collapsed, then threatened to spike again. Those who could trade on volatility often made untold fortunes; those actually needing to buy and sell real goods often suffered.

Ten | Complexity

There was a bull market in oversimplification, and no shortage of attempts to find someone to blame or, more hopefully, some way to make a difference. At the close of the decade some Christians were especially excited about the potential for cultural elites to change the world—just at the moment when elites everywhere were waking up to how little they could do to change anything at all. If there ever had been reliable levers of power—the Federal Funds Rate, Fashion Week, the New York Times bestseller list, the Nobel Peace Prize—they no longer carried much leverage in a world of countless connections, devolved into countless particular locations and conurbations, filled with fractious and fissiparous minorities, and ceaseless self-preoccupied informality. It was not a good time, to say the least, to be a central planner.

Yet all this complexity also contained the seed of certain kinds of promise. The human brain, after all, is also complex, interconnected, embodied, improvisational, constantly being rewired—simply put, the most complex system known in our universe. The culture of North America in the 2000s took several not inconsiderable steps toward having those same qualities. Not without risks, not without loss, and with every expectation of grave difficulty ahead. And yet in the most surprising places what was emerging could be called intelligence. Of course, intelligence needs to be married to wisdom—and in surveying the history of that most elusive of all cultural goods, we can only conclude that the 2000s left us neither worse nor better off than human beings have ever been.

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In your opinion, did Andy miss something? What would be on your list?

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Editor's note: The artwork above is by Julien Pacaud.

Comments

Jim Havron

So pleased to see someone state that the decade lasts through the coming year. This always confuses people.

I think Andy has a fairly good grasp on the main trends, but would like to add that the first, connection, seems to be the pivot for the rest. I know young folk who list people they have never met in person among their closest friends. I also think it has an impact on the others. For instance, the way we can connect with the rest of the world, in many cases working online, makes the home seem more of an anchor and makes place more important as it seems so transient in a world where you can go across the world physically or electronically in such short times.

At the same time, the absence of the physical touch and the ability to met and communicate with a larger number of people creates an impact on how we see others, and in some ways counters the pornographic view of the body and the "self shot." (I do think the idea of the self shot, packaging oneself, etc. seems at odds with the informality.)

The tendency to be more polarized is not, however, new. It appears again and again in history, usually accompanied by something that increases the ability of one or more groups to communicate their ideas. When the obstacles to communication and cohesion as a group break down, groups and ideas tend to strengthen. Is this polarization? To some extent, but at the same time it creates diversity within the polarized group.

I visited a "Tea Party" Rally last spring near my place of work. The news pointed out how polarized the folks were, and this was true as far as they strongly supported themes that were on their signs; smaller government and less taxes. However, conversations and reading of tee shirts showed that the participants were Democrats and Republicans and were quite varied in their other political views. Their race/ethnicity and economic status was not polarized either. It was the one issue that really united them against other ideas.

YouTube just celebrated 5 years. So much can happen before the decade officially passes, and since time is a construct, what will we see if we decide to check out what happens from 2005-2015? As we move closer to 3-dimensional communication, or whatever is next, all of this will have an effect on how we communicate and relate to one another. If we could just get back to "impact" as a nown, as in "has an impact on" rather than a verb, "it impacts," my old brain would be happy. Ah. Progress.

Chris

I would add:

1. The change in face-to-face social interaction. Even when the technically connected are with each other physically, they are also sharing thoughts, information, replying to emails and scanning for other information on portable devices. Established orders of social interaction are breaking down and rebuilding at the same moment in ways that have not been seen since the first group of humans gathered around a fire.

LScott

I like the breadth of Andy's list and the insights therein. Lots to think about, for sure!

At the same time, I would suggest an area called "religiosity". This is due to the really incredible amount of attention being paid to the various religions and segments of these religions in our public life(ves). The American scene is filled with great concern about the pluralism of our day. The areas of news-worthiness are filled with trying to identify and to understand Islam vs 'whatever'. The growth of Christianity in the Southern Hemisphere as well as the dominance, or lack of dominance, of whatever religions elsewhere. And it seems to me that the resultant pluralism is most recognizable by its syncretism, by its acceptance and approval of almost all religions as being on a level playing field, but with each religious group trying desperately to maintain, or achieve, a dominance in some particular area of the civilization. The demand for tolerance in this area seems to overwhelm any other evidences presented by these various religions. And it seems that this has happened mostly in the past twenty or thirty years. Thus, it is at an apex of our lives in this pluralistic and tolerance debate.

Jeff Brumley

Great stuff here Andy- although while Facebook might have started 2010 with fewer subscribers, I'm pretty sure they're past 500 million now.

Henry

Jeff, both you and Andy are correct. Facebook has 500+ million total subscribers *worldwide*; Andy included *only US* subscribers in his numbers.

Steve

A good commentary on the past decade. The only point I would disagree with was in the final sentence where he stated that we were neither better or worse off than humans have ever been. With the world wide trend for wealth becoming concentrated in the hands of a small minority while an ever increasing number sink into poverty, both abroad and in the USA, class lines between the "haves" and the "have nots" are becoming more sharply drawn. This is happening in both the third world and western industrialized countries. I would say that the "average person" is certainly worse off than they were in the 90's, with prospects for material advancement severely curtailed.

Wes

I believe the instability of the world economic scene has yet to deliver its final hand. Back in 2008 when it became the news story for the United States, few news persons had a whiff of how internationally wide spread the issue of economics would become. Ecomonic instability is no longer a third world concern. Governments in Europe would not have faced the flack they have in recent months with their electorate by taking the austerity measures they have unless they believed their backs were against the proverbial wall. Many boomers in North America are waking up to the realization there may be no retirement. A good and interesting read on where we may be is found in Strauss and Howe's book 'The Fourth Turning'. What was most provocative for me was that the book's authors predicted a powerful change would occur in the mid to late 2000 and the book was published in 1997. I would suggest that 'Place' became a factor more by economic pressures than for other reasons. It appears our economic uncertainty significantly effects better than half of the Andy's list.

Dave Leigh

Year Equals

1 First year

2 Second year

3 Third year

4 Fourth year

5 Fifth year

6 Sixth year

7 Seventh year

8 Eighth year

9 Ninth year

10 Tenth year - completes a decade

If a decade ran from '01 to '11 there would be 11 years in a decade.

This makes it hard to take the rest of your comments seriously.

Jonathan Merritt

Dave,

When you write it out like that you are assuming an 00 - 01 calendar year, which is kind of the point.

01 - 02

02 - 03

03 - 04

04 - 05

05 - 06

06 -07

07 -08

09 - 10

10 - 11

Ten years.

Thanks.

Jm

Todd Lemmon

So, even if Andy had made a mistake about how the decades work (which he absolutely did not), Dave is going to invalidate all of his thoughtfulness based on that?

Hugo Walker

A thought-provoking article for sure. Some great feedback and commentary too. I have one question though....no one mentioned the environmental movement and climate change. Yet I seem to recall a significant shift in how much attention is being paid to those issues. What do others think?

Hugo

Dave

Although our calendar is off by a few years, it was created on the assumption of anno domini, year of our Lord. Jesus' first year would have had a six-month mark. It had an 8th day mark, the day of his circumcision. His first birthday would have marked the completion of year 1. A year zero would mean Jesus was zero years old at the end of it. Think about it. No one is a decade old when they turn 11 but when they turn 10.

SFG

White non-Hispanic makes up 65% of the US population. Yes, we can divide White non-Hispanic into various categories (as you could 10 years ago, or 50 years ago) but White non-Hispanic continue to be the majority of the USA. So I don't agree that Sarah Palin is a "minority."

Jim

"Minority" status isn't based on race alone. For example, the mentally challenged constitute a minority.

Brian Considine

"and in surveying the history of that most elusive of all cultural goods, we can only conclude that the 2000s left us neither worse nor better off than human beings have ever been."

I would have to disagree based on some troubling signs that are still developing and to be played out in our nation. First, our economy is heading in the wrong direction. This is somewhat due to instrusive new government creating uncertainty in markets. Further, in one decade our national debt more than doubled. The long term effects are yet to be grasped. In our post-industrial society there is little chance of changing this course as we don't own the economic engine to drive the change needed, and that which we do own is seriously hampered on a global stage. We are a consumer nation more than ever and heading ever more into hedonism. Second, the increase in post-modern thought renders any truth increasingly irrelevant with our growing diversity of worldviews. Perhaps this plays into the polarity assessment but the house is more divided today than ever with increasing hostility toward the opposite. Further, it is driven mostly by false ideologies like man-made global warming that began to dictate national policy in the wrong direction. Andy is rather non-chalant in his reference to the fall of the Roman Empire due to diversity but the Roman Empire fell due to a loss of social identity. Where there is no coherent basis for a cohesive connection amongst a people, social decline will result. Third, I think as has already been mentioned in the comments, religious influence is headed in the wrong direction. In the past twenty year the population that attests to no belief has doubled, and this is only trending upward. While Christianity may be a minority, the values even among those who say they are Christian, a declining number, have also denigrated according to most recent studies. In fact, near the end of 2010, one mega-pastor called for a Summit on Integrity for Christian pastors and leaders due to a decline in ethics within the Church. Also, in the last decade, the New Atheists have emerged with a strong voice and people are more willing than ever to self-identify publicly as atheist, agnostic or no belief.

Based on these 3 points, at least, the conclusion I would have to come to is we are very much heading in the wrong direction. There is no such thing as the status quo that Andy's concluding comment posits. Otherwise, an interesting analysis.

And, does it really matter what constitutes a decade? That argument seems seriously silly when such great challenges face this nation, and the Church in our nation. If my people...

Jonathan Merritt

Brian,

In the last phrase of your comments, "my people" is a quote from 2 Chronicles. The "people" referred to here are the ancient Israelites and the promise here is not being made to Americans or "the Church in our nation." In fact, the problem being addressed is desolate land (drought and locust infestation, v. 13) and the promise upon "turning from their wicked ways" is that God "will forgive their sins and heal their land." Even if this promise was being made to the people you suggest it is, you'd only be asking God for agricultural blessing. We already have Jesus' forgiveness through the cross.

Jm

Paul Atkinson

Andy...

Just wanted to say thank you for your post (especially now that I've read through everyone's decade comments). These are great perspectives. Thank you for sharing! The only thought I had as I finished your article was: "I wonder if someone wrote this exact same post/article 10 years ago?" :) especially if things haven't changed as much as we perceive and given the cyclical process of so many things. Thanks again for sharing!

Baggas

While I have heard endless arguments about which year represents the end of the decade, I have never before heard anyone try to say that it is 2011!

Remember this was the big debate in 1999, when 2000 was supposed to be the first year of the new century - many argued that the century/decade actually began in 2001. Even so, if the decade began in 2001, then ten years ended at the end of 2010 (if the decade began in 2000, then it would have ended at the end of 2009) - this editor's note about '01-'11 is preposterous! 2001 - 2011 is an eleven year period, not a decade!

tom

A Prayer From Jesus

It's finally come down to this, I knew it would eventually. Unfortunately for YOU, who have missed the mark, which means you are going to hell. Your portion will be in the lake of fire. Don't be offended at me, it's your preacher, or that radio personality, even that man that told you that you are saved, blame them. Then again when your screaming in the pit it really doesn't matter whose at fault, does it. For it is your responsibility to know the way of salvation.

Why? You ask. Simply, you trusted man to lead you to Christ. Not once have you asked Jesus if you are saved. If you did you never waited for an answer. There is only one that we should ask on how to be saved, that is Christ Jesus.

Jesus has made it easy for you to know where you will stand on the last day. Pray this Prayer, and Jesus will answer all who diligently seeks Him.

These are the last days, This is your last chance.

Pray the Prayer, and KNOW!

- A PRAYER FROM JESUS -

This prayer is from Jesus that we may hear from Him, that He may speak to our hearts. It only consist of three simple steps.

1) We need to read one scripture. This will focus us in the word that brings everlasting life.

2) Since this prayer is from Jesus we need to direct our prayer to Him personally. Too often Christian focuses they're prayer's to G_D the father. Scripture proclaims that Jesus should be the focus of our prayer.

3) The simplest part of this Prayer is to ask Jesus one question. Please, all that is required for this question is that it should be simple. Let Jesus Himself finish the question when He gives you that understanding through this prayer.

The PRAYER

The scripture that is the focus of this prayer is "ACTS 2:38". It's not necessary to do any study into this scripture. Jesus Himself will give you the understanding that will resonate in your heart. Just read Acts 2:38, keep it in your heart and take this one scripture to prayer

The most important part of this prayer is that we need to direct our prayer directly to Jesus. If you normally would say Father in your prayer, change your focus from the Father to Christ Jesus, by lifting Jesus name up every time you would normally use Father in your prayer.

Maybe the hardest part of this prayer is the question that we need to ask Jesus. For man as we are, always trying to understand the question instead of listening to the answer. The simplest question is all that is required.

Simply ask Jesus 'WHY'

For those who are obedient

tsquare777(at)gmail.com

wendy

I wonder, Andy, where you might place the movement in erasing marginalization due to sexuality and gender in your list. Not only is acceptance of sexual minorities on the rise, there is a trend among sexual minorities to deconstruct labels and categories that previously defined such experience. The rising comfort level with ambiguous gender is certainly a reality that is impacting our culture and our navigation in such culture as followers of Christ.

Tim Archer

Just to join the pedantic party, let me point out that "a decade" is any period of 10 years. It is not incorrect to talk about the decade of the 60s, for example. Just as I can say "it hasn't snowed like that in a century," when I'm referring to the last 100 years.

No offense to the editor, but that opening paragraph distracts from an otherwise excellent article.

Grace and peace,

Tim Archer

Steve A.

I found this article helpful, but somewhat trite. At 55 years old, I always appreciate someone summarizing things for me, but I can certainly tell that this was produced by a younger mind than mine.

And although 9/11, Islam, and the militant threat abroad and at home are topics that have been beaten to death, I am surprised to have missed this in the list since all of this came in the scene in 2001.

The cultural trend of Islamic Angst might make my list, as we are ever waking up to the reality that we are in a 3rd World War being waged by barbarous old world tactics using new world technologies. The real problem of of Islamic ascendancy over the last ten years, and their present control of nuclear weapons by proxy, is one of the most frightening realities we face.

Chris

One trend that I thought about as I read your article:

Content: In the past ten years the amount of content that is available to the common man has increased exponentially. Google puts the world's information at my fingertips. YouTube allows the distibution of endless amounts of video to a global audience. Facebook allows information sharing of the most minute details of daily life. The amount of content that is created and consumed by the average person is greater than any time before. And the content is accessible at any time on any number of devices. We have more information, but it has made us dumber.

PMV

This is a very well written and insightful piece - congratulations, it was a pleasure to read. The only thing I'd add or pose is that - rather than the Self-Shot - perhaps a more wide-spread and accepted case of vanity is the broader trend (while the self-shot is an icon, or representation of that). Our highly visible, digital personas have made us hyper-aware of how we look to those that view us. As have street photographers, paparazzi, and the ever--present camera you noted. Not to mention reality TV, where you can become a celebrity for 15 minutes by doing...absolutely nothing.

This is one where I found it hard to see an upside. Hopefully we will start to see the humor in how ridiculous we've become - and take our eyes away from the camera long enough to do actually DO something worthwhile - besides take photos at 3 different angles?

Colin Bell

Something I was surprised not to see explicitly, although it underlies some of the others, is a sense of transition from a period of relative certainty and security to a new and unknown world. 9/11 and the recent economic crises have been the main signs, political and economic, but there's also been a lot of social changes as noted.

With a couple of others, I'm also inclined to regard the decade as a decline, rather than some good and some bad, but maybe it's more a correction to the over-optimism of the 1990s.

(And one further bit of pedantry, sorry. Whatever you think of decades, this is definitely the _third_ millennium, not the second!)

regina latella

"... a qualitative change in the horizons of possibility..."

as part of genX, the hyper-connectivity/access yet diminishing depth inspires in me that while quite anything may be possible, it most certainly is not all beneficial. this is perhaps a prosaic moral principle to many, but has been missing in action – we cannot get enough connectivity or stuff & have trouble balancing advancement with the intrapersonal. & so i think a huge challenge of our time is harnessing advancement for good & not greed. i observe a genuine longing for depth & real connectivity once again & i pray we can engage to a level where "intelligence does marry wisdom".

this is such a smart & well organized read! thank you for sharing.

best,

regina

Bill D.

Just wondering - in the section on "connection," should the statistics have said that there were 293 million mobile phone subscriptions rather than mobile phone subscribers? It seems highly unlikely that only 8 million people in the USA are non-subscribers. There are growing numbers of people who have multiple mobile phone accounts, as well as countless companies who have mobile phone subscriptions for employees who may also have individual ones for themselves.

Otherwise, a fascinating piece.

Regards,

Bill D.

Chip C

Just 1 real quick point of dissension as I respond to this from my mobile and a link sent by my friend on facebook.

Second life is not a good example of virtual reality; the virtual engine is still a bit cumbersome with respect to this decade's bit constrained pipeline. ' World of warcraft' one of hundreds of old and new MMORPG's ( massive multiplayer online role playing games) to come out this decade. No, virtual reality was very much a success this decade.

Other than this, I found the article be interesting, even if it was a bit tedious typing out this response on my mobile phone though the speech to text engine made this, more than I imagined it would become, very manageable. although it did steadfastly refused to capitalize the first word of each sentence. perhaps the next decade will find us losing the use of the capitalized first word. Ps: in a case of technology thwarting human thinking, the image verification code, with its plethora of computer confusing dots, changed what was a code of onhxek into an almost incomprehendable bnhtek, a bane of electronic life, which apparently I never got right till it change d to another 1

M Molvey

The environment?? Lots of trends along those lines, none of which seem very good.

J Burton

This was mentioned above but:

1) More connections, less connectivity, more specializations (More likely to have multiple contacts who are less likely to be the type of friend that would help you move, but might attend your "Partner for ______" monthly meeting or follow your blog.

2) Environmentalism: the bane and boon of business (new emerging opportunities, higher costs in older models)

3) No inner monologue - Sharing thoughts freely, not necessarily encouraging debate, action, or change. Free speech = I need access to millions of people to tell them what I had for lunch today or why I like Fridays

4) A shift toward nationalism (threats abroad + entended wars + tea party rhetoric + economic hardship = a stronger identification with protecting national interests)

5) Redefining privacy (instant videos + legislative response to 9/11 + boom of internet + digital records + identity theft = little is actually private any more)

6) Return to the trades and technician programs (retiring baby boomers + nostalgia for past days of gardens and handymen + explosion of bachelor's degrees + joblessness in the white collar world = best options may no longer be through a traditional liberal arts education)

7) Medical uncertainty (benefits decreasing + lack of regulation + cost increasing + higher obesity + largest retiring generation in American history = we broke the health bank)

8) Saying sorry (rehab and public recognition of a failure no longer immediately equal public scorn and loss of a job)

9) Cost of surviving increases (while mini-luxuries become more available (i.e. lattes, smartphones, day spas) the average cost of energy + housing + healthcare greatly increased)

a few I would add

joseph

The entertainment culture. Perhaps out-grossing (no pun intended) event the porn industry, the amount of time people consume on entertainment with the advent on high speed internet and lower costs dvds, and good computers, people waste their time before a screen than ever before.

Howard Lawrence

Great piece, thanks.

I think that the decline of the current structure of "the church" is noteworthy. The shift away from clergy, buildings and Sunday worship is significant particularly in that belief in Jesus as God continues to grow.

Sheila

I am quite sure we are in the third millenium A.D. The first one ended 12/31/1000, the second millenium ended 12/31/2000, and we are now in the 12th year of the third millenium.

Aren't we?

David

First, I enjoyed the post very, very much, and always read your work with great profit, Andy.

But I do agree with Wendy. If you go back to 2003, that was when the Supreme Court struck down all sodomy laws with Lawrence v. Texas. It was a victory for the “gay” movement. Now they could “love” whomever they wanted, without fear of being arrested. From there, the Gay Movement or Agenda – whatever name you might give it – achieved success with "acceptance films" like 2005's “Brokeback Mountain”,and 2008's “Milk.” But I think over these last ten years, the success of the agenda has been that they have moved past widespread "tolerance," to then a redefinition of what is “right” and what is “wrong” in society, such that now they are able to move past "acceptance" and on to "celebration" of the lifestyle.

To miss that trend – which I think is socially more significant as it redefines the most basic of social, cultural building blocks: marriage – stands out in its absence. I wonder how it was overlooked…?

The Other Lebowski

In talking about the culture of a decade, the exact years don't matter. When speaking of culture, decades arent about years but trends. When major trends end, then a decade ends. For instance, what we call "the 60's" is a reference to stuff like Nam, woodstock, drug culture, NIxon, etc. But those things actually started well into the 60's and extended through NIxon. Watergate, for instance may have ended the decade of love, but the decade of love defines a cultural trend not a calendar decade. The "80's" ended with Reagan, and perhaps the 00's started with 9-11.

Donna Malbon

Good article and interesting discussion. I want to add that Sinclair's book on Freedom vs. Control, though written decades ago, continues to be a major theme. As more and more people inhabit this globe, there is the need to make rules that are good for the majority of people. The individual who eschews that thought is ever more vocal that individual rights are being taken away. Environmental protections are in a big fight here in the Pacific Northwest, and other places,with those who want to use the land for their own benefit.i.e. cut down trees at their own discretion; ruin habitat for endangered or "threatened" species for their own recreation ( snowmobiles & roads). This example is just one of many other issues that continues to divide the progressives from the regressives.

Donna M

luis rodriguez

you should include picture for every subject for more details to be understood.

HAROLD SETH KNIGHT

MORE HOMOGENEOUS THAN EVER

In fact I would say there has been a certain loss in the ability of Americans to morally judge human reality across the board. Look at mainstream media; even professionals of certain age within the sector will tell you that real journalism independent of vested economic interests is over, long gone. In the never ending mindless drive towards profits, human purpose in America has almost been forgotten; another example would be the health industry where even the true effectiveness of medication is second place to buying and selling at macro economic scale. And yet nobody truly seems to care: there are no serious voices that question the American mindlessness of profit before vitality. And I would say this happened conclusively in the 90s and accelerated (I agree with that) after 2000. But as long as I get my money by next Friday, who gives a damn?

Sean

David, you wrote: "It was a victory for the “gay” movement. Now they could “love” whomever they wanted, without fear of being arrested ...... a redefinition of what is “right” and what is “wrong” in society, such that now they are able to move past "acceptance" and on to "celebration" of the lifestyle."

So, not arresting people for their sexual choice is a....regression? Seriously? I'm sorry that you're all hot and bothered over other people's private lives, but no one asked you to be America's cultural nanny. Educate yourself a bit, get laid(it sounds like you need to badly), and welcome cultural evolution without such a myopic perspective. Also....lay way way off the "quotes." It makes it "sound" like every "thing" you "write" is bathed in "sarcasm."

Ted

The article was very well written and I think that I was struck most by one change. The 70's, 80's, and 90's were defined largely by the themes and trends we saw on TV, but largely because of TV, only a handful of elites talked to everyone. This has a sort of culturally unifying effect, and so homogenous, identifiable culture themes could actually become the icons for a decade. But in reality, the distinctions between disco 70's/punk rock 80's/ and alternative grunge 90's seem like so many variations of the same re-hashed MTV era and the distinction is shallow by comparison to what's happening now.

The 00's didn't introduce an easily iconic culture theme, because it introduced an entirely different defining media, like the difference between the generations that only had radio vs. the ones that had TV. Everyone talks now, but because it's so easy to find a voice that will tell you what you want to hear, we are no longer getting the whole story. I used to think radicalized TV like Fox was to blame for the emergence of political polarity, but in reality, no one except conservatives was really watching that anyway. We are polarizing because in an internet world where we can read about or watch whatever we want whenever we want to, we are hearing less and less from people we don't agree with. And so I leave it to the ubiquitous phone-videos of cute kittens and laughing babies to remind us of how human we all really are and that underneath all the politically charged rhetoric, most of us have a lot more in common than we probably want to admit.

Bill George

I would add gender confusion to this list. This is the generation that will make “normal” the GLBT lifestyle and persecute anyone who calls into question its ethics.

Caroline

One thing I would say is very prevalent among our nation's youth (I'm 17) is the sense of discontent and hopelessness that were feeling. There are so many people with body issues and depression and the level of stress put upon us in school about our futures- the amount of college grads loving back in with their parents is staggering- is such a defining feature of today.

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