MPP here we go.
I often say, that being born in the 90s, we are the slice between generations. A truly 1 of 1 piece of humanity, that is uniquely standing on the edge of two very different worlds.
We shared things in common with the Millenials, and we also share things with Gen Z. Sure, about half of us are technically millenials, and half of us are Gen Z, but really we are neither. We remember VHS, cassettes, before there was a computer in the house, then the first one in the basement, riding our bikes around to find our homies. But we are also comfortable with emerging technology, whether that was the rise of the internet, cellphones, social media, or all the things that have come since.
I guess we were spawned with a weird mix of cynicism and optimism, like we saw the promise, but we also saw the destruction, and we have had to walk that line our whole lives.
As an American, being born in the mid 90s, my first cemented memory, like many others was 9/11. My mom getting called, flipping on the TV, watching the second tower get hit. I remember where I was sitting.
We were born in the last of the smooth, and came to reality in the chaos. Young enough to miss Michael Jordan. Old enough to remember multiple people picking up the phone when I called my friend.
This leads us into week 1's first question. What would I be doing if I was born in the 1790s, instead of 1990s.
I guess maybe I would have run a print press. Seems to fit right. Something powerful about creating and sharing information. Most of my generation would have been working the ground though, taking care of animals and the such. Yes there was wider opportunity, some would have been traders, or sailors, shop owners, workers, skilled tradesmen, but most would have been farmers in one way or another.
Much like the 1990s, the 1790s also came at a tipping point of humanity. It was the rise of democracy, and the rebuttal of the monarchy. It was the first decade of the United States of America, and it was also the decade of the French Revolution. We were born right in the middle of it. This societal upheaval would have strongly shaped our lives, and depending where we were existing, it would have massive implications for the life we would live.
As a writer, and maybe in my 1790s born self, of becoming a printer, in what, the 1810s, I would have played a roll in helping shape public opinon. This time is the line between the pre-industrial and the industrial times. Technology, was going through rapid changes, as the world shifted away from how it had functioned (one way or another) since humans had started to domesticate animals and settle down. This was the time still, when the print press was king. The time when information moved as fast as man could carry it. I guess carrier pigeons and smoke signals were a thing too, so technically information could move faster than man could carry it, but in general, information was carried by man, through letters, books, news papers, flyers.
What draws me most to the print shop, isn't the thought of creating information to be spread, but that the print shop was the cross roads of ideas, and change. It would have been where the information would first come, before being disseminated to the masses. It would be a place of conversation, of speculation, of debate, as the wider world was brought into a smaller lense, and the path of humanity was questioned.
In a time when information moved slowly, the place where the information arrived, became powerful.
As a printer, your job wasn't just putting ink on paper, it was selecting what ideas you wanted to amplify. What arguments deserved to be heard. What was worth printing, and what would be ignored.
Playing a roll, in shaking up societies fixed order. For centuries most people believed that everything was fixed. That kings ruled because God said they should rule. That nobles governed, because it was their birthright. Farmers farmed, because that is what their father did.
But this time, coming in the afterglow of the American Revolution, and the French Revolution, it was a time fully there to challenge the status quo that had determined your entire trajectory through life. Maybe you could be born a farmer, and not die as one as well.
Maybe now, as I get here, I start to realize, that being born in the 1990s, while worlds different than being in the 1790s, really share a lot of things in common. While being a child of the 90s, my voice can spread around the globe, it competes with the numerous voices that flood every aspect of media. If I were born in the 1790's maybe my voice would be stronger, but my reach would be limited more locally, as information didn't have the tools to spread as far, or as quickly.
We sit here now, at the cross roads of the future. Where honestly it seems like we keep choosing the darker timeline. The optimism of the 90s, of the growth and expansion of technology, ushering in changes that have completely revolutionized the world, is fading away into a dystopian novel that is something Orwell could have written in the 50s.
As 90s kids, we feel that stretch, holding on to two worlds, we are the glue, the historians that are tasked with remembering the past, while also being the translators of the future. We are the bridge between the analog and the digital.
I don't know what the answer is. So I write. And I think. And I argue, I debate, I converse, I speculate.
This is Mild Panic Press after all. Thank you to my good friend Jake for week 1's question, and thank you to my readers, for making it through the first one together with me.
—MPP