Brandon Chicotsky

                     The Vacuum of Downtime for an Information Baby

            My generation may not know who to thank for the capitalization of computer microminiaturization advances. Such advances have spawned broadly accessible and affordable personal computer products and internet communication technology. The commercialization and marketing campaigns using this technology have inspired stable interfaces for sharing information and developing captivating applications in what we commonly refer to as, ‘social media’.

Whether it’s the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), British scientist Tim Berners-Lee (“world wide web” creator), Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, Tom Anderson, Mark Zuckerberg, or Larry Page and Sergey Brin, my generation owes significant credit to the aforementioned innovators and a host of others for creating a new vacuum of downtime.

Admittedly, my entertainment or whimsical creation is often channeled toward interactive technology, rapid global communication, or information sharing. This begs the question, what does an ‘information baby’ do with spare time? I’ll tell you exactly what we do…we play and inundate our minds.

Put yourself in the mindset of a Baby Boomer. For those who belong in this demographic, I invite sentimental reminiscing. Large-scale commercial products like: erector sets, tinker toys, color television sets, flying miniature helicopters, high-powered telescopes, easy to engineer bottle rockets, remote control toy cars, electric battery lights, citizens’ band (CB) radio, stand-up speakers, four track players, eight track players, and the Texas Instruments’ hand held calculator (remember the $100 and $200 pricing?)…these items among other simple rotary machine toys and sound projecting devices made up the bulk of technology play toys for Baby Boomers.

The downtime of young students in the Baby Boomer era had less connectivity with citizens of other nation-states. There were no visual labyrinths of online linking, coding, and embedding. There were few opportunities to move 2D, 3D, or 4D images in real time through virtual simulation, and few opportunities to map out graphic and informational architecture on a well pixilated and well illuminated screen.

Information was spread orally, through physical publications, through code transfers connected by electronic wiring, through rough video and audio tracking, or physical transfer of ink typed or written imaging or language. Today, all modes of communication from the Baby Boomer era remain in practice, as do a multitude of expedited processes that captivate, easily commercialize, digitize, and connect the world at rapid speed.

Today, my colleagues in graduate school likely read over 3,000 words of content in a business journal or online news publication before attending lecture each day. It’s estimated the front page of the New York Times has roughly 2,200 words, all of which can be obtained on a smart phone with a few scrolls of the thumb. For us multi-taskers, we may enjoy a television news program (they now stream online), which delivers 150-200 words per minute while reading our online publication and fielding SMS (text message) alerts from the Wall Street Journal. This is a simple example of information inundation for news enthusiasts or habitual news readers (I’m one of them).

On average, I have about 8 browsers open at once. Most browsers involve news, social media, search engine entries, music applications, or online radio or podcast broadcasting. The audio feeds outside of music involve information output or idea sharing from industry savants or respected authors. Imagine what this does to a mind in repeated daily sequence over a course of several years of formative growth. Almost all colleagues of mine in graduate school have developed these habits.  

While writing this blog entry, I have a radio segment playing in the back round, which I helped develop with other information babies. As an example of how we spent our down time, and to draw a distinct contrast to the recreation involving technology from generations prior, I’ll explain…

While employed with menial tasks (entering data on excel and drafting formulas to determine industry trends and company revenue projections) I found extra time to correspond online with other uninspired young professionals to build an online radio show. We used free software, which we downloaded on sites known as, “open source,” and embedded template applications (also obtained through open source) on another larger template website design. With a little bit of ‘photoshop’ (a term used as a verb, which describes a program that enables graphic imaging and photo editing), we filled in the template design with our customized imaging. With the open source software, open source application, open source web site design, and ‘photoshopped’ imaging, we had a presentable site with functionality.

The site’s goal was to offer a 24/7 radio show and feature humorous video content specific to our industry of interest [either produced by us, by hired interns, or obtained through other online social mediums (like YouTube)]. We took this content and embedded the videos and pictures on our site. We hired interns out of our local universities (respective to our place of work) to broadcast 24/7, wcovering news content, conduct interviews, and offer entertaining segments around the clock. The radio show would broadcast from the site and be accessible worldwide with a simple internet connection. Finally, we embedded a donation application or, “button,” on the site so listeners have the opportunity to express their support for the show.

This entire operation has proven successful (respective to our goals), and the show remains on air and has been running for months. Our expenses are completely off-set by listener contributions, and most notably, we’re all extraordinarily entertained during any waking hour.

 Perhaps we were venting from the lack of entrepreneurial freedom in our jobs, or maybe we sensed our generational advantage in developing online endeavors. One confidant is a full-time and profitable online Texas Hold ‘Em player and the other an up-and-coming hardware engineer with a knack for affiliate marketing schemes and basic HTML coding. Bottom line, we represent a breed of plugged-in, online intuitive thinkers, who utilize popular software and internet tools at our disposal to inundate or minds, communicate abroad, and build enterprises via the internet.

Sometimes, these endeavors become markedly profitable for our friends. Other times, as in the case I described with our radio show, only our small network and industry fans enjoy the fruits of our labor. Social media is mostly where we recruit listeners, and those who tune in are loyal listeners and contributors.

Through various chat mediums (skype messaging, oovoo, facebook chat, gmail chat, “tweets” on twitter, online forum threads, and Microsoft Instant Messenger), we were able to brain storm several ideas and delegate tasks. Meanwhile, each of us maintained our various projects, managed our jobs’ deadlines and browsed news, engaged social media, listened to audio feeds, and learned new coding methods through search engine entries.

I must qualify this behavior by saying each confidant involved has developed skill-sets that function outside the online arena, as have most information babies. My confidants and I are sufficient public speakers, have respectable interpersonal communication and organizational skills, and we are enthusiastic dressers of business professional or occasional golf casual.

We learned these skills in the last feudal system in the United States – college campus education; a place where tenured professorships provide timeless insight. I promise, ageless principles touted by Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill have not fallen on deaf ears. I refer these skills because they belong to the majority of college educated members of my generation, especially those who attended The University of Texas.

Information babies generally understand the importance of maintaining relationships, building tangible plans, visualizing success, and creating lasting influence as leaders in varied industry positions. All the while, information babies often have other functions or facets of excellence. We’re superb multi-taskers, we retain and regurgitate information at unprecedented levels, we’re exposed to hundreds of thousands of impressions (images on the computer screen) during an average week; whether advertising, news articles, flash media, website architecture, data, interactive maps, search engine results, interface application systems, or communication technology.

What’s most notable is that information babies are now available on the market to join your companies, start their own entrepreneurial endeavors, and educate the next generation of youths. In our early years, most of our parents taught us to utilize our time wisely, develop a high emotional intelligence, and seek mentors. However, it’s likely none of our parents told us to spend our downtime engaging a community of friends through social media tools or inundating our minds with information through search engines and varied online news-feed portals. The reason these mandates were not pressed upon us is because the vacuum of downtime described above never existed until now.

-Brandon Chicotsky