Kids don’t care about the moon landings

Last week a 15 year-old Morgan Stanley intern claimed that teenagers don’t use Twitter and shook the business world. Well, here¹s another revelation for the media: young people don¹t care about the moon landings either.
 
This is partly caused by anniversary fatigue – don’t TV commissioners have any new ideas? But mostly because, for my generation, breaking new scientific or technological ground is par for the course. The wide-eyed amazement of older generations (think Uncle Bryn in Gavin and Stacey) at new sat-navs, iPods or cameras is something that entirely bypasses their children and grandchildren. Fascination with technological achievement has been lost as surely as prudery at promiscuity.

My friends and I admire new designs for their aesthetics but do not stop to gasp at the very fact that something exists. New technology ­ touch-screens, video phones, wireless interneT ­ is anticipated long before it arrives, Moore’s law guaranteeing its arrival. Planned obsolescence is the central strategy of Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Nintendo and every technological innovator.