ABSTRACT
From the previous chapters we have learnt that one might expect that people born around the same time, and in the same specific geo-cultural and political environment, have the potential to develop similar relationships to the media as technologies and content. To Mannheim, a prerequisite for the forming of a generation is that people actually have experienced the same societal events, that they have a ‘common location in the historical dimension of the social process’ ( Mannheim 1928/1952: 290). The condition for such experiences is that individuals are born at approximately the same time, and thus have the possibility of first-hand experience of societal events of historical magnitude, but also first-hand experience of fresh contact with new media forms and technologies. Only then is there a potential for developing a collective consciousness that binds individuals together through shared experience.
