Doug Green's Blog

Once again, I see the spectre of age-rage happening around the blogosphere. What’s with all the let’s-get-the-young-people-gardening angst and counter-angst?

It might help by starting with a quote from Marshall Macluhan to set the stage, “Youth instinctively understands the present environment – the electric drama. It lives mythically and in depth.”

When you and I were young Maggie, we implicitly understood the nature of television and laughed at those who told us it would rot our minds and ruin civilization as we knew it (maybe as those radio folks knew it) When rock and roll burst onto the scene, the young implicitly understood the message, the old never did figure it out. Similarly rap music, computers, iphones, iPads, and video have left successive generations scratching their heads at “what the young people are doing”

The young people know.

My take on this is a fairly simple one – in my generation, there was no conversation between writer and reader. It was a one-way street. The tv generation was similarly a one-way street as was the first mobile phone, and the first iPod. Writers and other creative folks sent their messages out and they were consumed.

But something changed a few short years ago with the rise of new immersive, communication technologies. The young implicitly understand they aren’t on the receiving end of a conversation anymore, they are the conversation. They aren’t on the receiving end of a marketing message, they’re either the marketing message or they aren’t. There’s likely little in-between here, you’re either on the bus or off (thank you Ken Kesey).

You’re part of the conversation. Or not.

So talking to young people – a one way flow – to convince them that gardening is good is pretty much a waste of time. Producing videos for them to consume is pretty much a waste of time. Creating one way flows is, well, a waste of time. These people understand they’re part of a flow of communication – back and forth – and if you want to engage in that flow, you do so in ways they understand. Not in imposing your level of technological understanding onto theirs. It’s why radio-generation folks just don’t get the power of the Net. It’s why advertising – a one way street – is a tough sell the younger you go along the age/tech-level highway.

For example, in normal life, a young person is texting, sharing video, chatting with nearby friends, moving their body and listening to music – mostly at the same time. When we take them into a classical music concert or gardening seminar, (or most other places) we say, “Turn off your phone, don’t text, don’t take videos or pictures, sit still, don’t talk, don’t fidget with friends, and absorb this information”. Their lives as part of an ongoing conversation are stopped – they’re taken out of their cultural life and expected to enter one that was relevant several hundred years ago.

In the garden world, it’s pretty much the same thing. When was the last time you saw an ad that involved the target group you wanted to reach (other than we old guys). There’s no conversation happening there – it’s still one way. Instead, try figuring out a way to get younger folks into your garden or botanic garden – inviting them to video, text, and share what’s going on as it’s going on – create a relevant, interesting-to-them conversation.

Conversations are the future? No. They’re the now.

Even this blog is pretty-much one way. It’s old tech based on Internet years (roughly comparable to dog-years) and yes, a few of you may actually drop me a note about this but the vast majority don’t enter into a conversation around blog posts. It’s no longer done to any large percentage of the readership base.

Conversations still happen within smaller groups though and that’s strong. Where my generation had them on the single family telephone in the kitchen (heck, I still remember country party-lines – yes, I’m that old) this generation lives within a conversation that’s multi-layered – from fully public in larger groups to (they hope but are never sure) fully private and all stored online in multiple platforms.

You don’t talk-to a conversation. You either enter it or leave it alone.