Future imperfect

From The Age (Melbourne). 'To generation Y, the world is an uncertain place - and for many of them, that's not such a bad thing.' Smart, accurate piece about a demographic that I call the 'soulitarians' in the Play Ethic book. Says the piece's paradigm Y'er, Nick Verginis:

"Our generation thinks anything is possible because we look past constraints imposed on previous generations. We hear the economic rationalist theology which dogs people 30 to 40, but we are not taken in by it. We are realistic, so that when management talks like that, we see through it."

Professor Johanna Wyn, the director of Melbourne University's Australian Youth Resources Centre, which has studied 2000 Y-gen twentysomethings, agrees. "They have their eyes wide open," she says. "They really are looking at things differently to previous generations. They are the most educated young people ever, and they have been made to stay at school longer." She calls them the "Don't Lock Me In Generation". "They understand there's no point putting all your hope in one thing, because everything is changing," she says. "They don't want to be stamped with a label, like 'plumber'. That's the old model. It doesn't fit the world. They opt for experience. They're secretly smarter than we think."

Here's a more political celebration of the uncertain life, from veteran US left historian Howard Zinn.