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Thomas Kuhn, in paraphrasing Max Planck, wrote in his ground breaking 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, that

a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. . . Conversions will occur a few at a time until, after the last hold-outs have died, the whole profession will again be practicing under a single, but now different, paradigm.

Paradigm shifts, in other words, whether it be scientific, or by extension technological, don’t really gain a hold on a society until the old geezers meet their maker. I was reminded of this by-now fairly common, if not depressing insight, in coming upon the very last paragraph of Nicholas Carr’s new book, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google where he seems to be channeling Kuhn but with an interesting twist. Carr writes:

All technological change is generational change. The full power and consequences of a new technology are unleashed only when those who have grown up with it become adults and begin to push their outdated parents to the margins. As the older generations die, they take with them their knowledge of what was lost when the new technology arrived, and only the sense of what was gained remains. It’s in this way that progress covers its tracks, perpetually refreshing the illusion that where we are now is where we were meant to be.

As one of those being slowly dragged by the pace of technological change to the intellectual iceberg , I’ve yet to give up the good fight. But Carr in his own way has issued yet another implied challenge to the boomer generation in addition to just ‘keeping up’, namely, what can we learn from what is being lost in this maelstrom of shifting mentalities?

We see this paradigmatic tug-of-war going full tilt in health care. Whether it be the ‘demographic’ battle over Health 2.0, or what it means to live in the postgenomic material world, health care is becoming the poster child for these generational mashups. And maybe that’s just the term for what we are seeing and what we should see more of in the future: inter-generational cultural explorations, something essential to realizing the best in technological change.

Technology critics, such as Cass Sunstein, often point to the polarizing and narrowing effects of the internet world and its possible impact on democracy. Maybe those raised in pre-internet times, having read pre-citizen journalist newspapers, and having lived in a pre-web world have something to offer after all. By helping to capture what is being lost, maybe in time it will re-covered, re-thought and re-spected for the human value it re-presents.