generalization

Siva Vaidhyanathan just published "Generational Myth: Not All Young People are Tech-Savvy" in the Chronicle of Higher Education Review. http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=cyR8ms385ZjjcHcyWC5drKsJZckwxjkz I've already written to him to let him know how much I like this piece . . . And it also makes me antsy. As a historian of technology, I often find myself vacillating between generalization and specificity. Well, there's that one diary . . . and on the other there is the category of persons that one diarist represents. Ah, yes. Representation. Again.

Raymond Williams notes "There are no masses, only ways of seeing masses."  I agree.  How we group others into categories is one of the most important and, potentially, the most constructive or destructive social tools we have.

Is the science speed-up to blame for the glitzy multimedia presentation of even the most careful scientific experimental findings as big cure-all, one-size-fits-all generalizations that appear regularly in the mainstream press?