Notes on the Coming Conservative Ascendancy

Who are the NetGeners? And why do I believe they hold such promise for the Right? Because the NeT Geners are at the confluence of the Internet as the dominant communications tool, economic platform and social connector, the demographic reality of a generation growing into adulthood whose numbers exceed even that of the vaunted Baby Boomers, and the intrinsic contradiction between the politics of centralization that currently defines politics and governance and the culture of choice that defines the coming majority of Americans.

For these reasons, the prospect of the inauguration of Barack Obama as president and  the swearing-in of a new Congress controlled by liberal Democrats doesn’t spark despair for me. To the contrary, the more I learn about the Net Geners, the more optimistic I am that the conservative moment in American political history is far from passed, and in fact is an approaching reality.

Consider the observations of one Don Tapscott and his latest book, “Grown Up Digital.” The term “NetGeners” was coined by Tapscott, who is a Canadian business executive and futurologist with a prolific pen (no, I’ve never met him and have only talked with him on the telephone once. We are probably very distant cousins, given the rarity of our share last name).

The Net Generation are the approximately 81 million people born between 1977 and 1997, the oldest of which are now 31 and the youngest are 11. They aren’t Generation X, also known as the Baby Bust years, and they aren’t Generation Next, which is the generation coming after the Net Geners. Note there were 77 million Boomers, so the 81 million Net Geners are the biggest demographic bulge in American history.

Two of his previous books, “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything,” and “Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation,” provide essential backgrounding for the current work. He is also a frequent speaker at places like Davos and Harvard, and a YouTube search on his name currently turns up 55 entries. He is, in short, a familiar face on the lecture and book circuits.

Understand that “Grown Up Digital” is not intended as a political tome. If anything, I suspect that Don Tapscott is a Canadian liberal who were he a U.S. citizen would be a reliable Democratic voter. He might even laugh at the idea that his analyses point to an opportunity for conservatives to be the political inspiration of the NetGeners. But prophets often don’t grasp the full significance of  their prophecies and this is, in my humble view, the case with “Grown Up Digital.”

Undestand, too, that Tapscott’s work is far from the only source of my observations here or elsewhere. A recent post here on Tapscott’s Copy Desk pointed to my very first effort as a blogger in 2004 as evidence that the positive impact of the Internet on the political prospects of the Right has been much on my mind for a long time. Many of my former colleagues at The Heritage Foundation will also recall how I often grabbed them by the lapels during Monday morning management meetings while boldly proclaiming the Internet as key to the conservative future.

For purposes of this post, however, I want to look at the implications for conservatives of the third chapter in “Growing Up Digital,” which is entitled “The eight Net Gen norms.” These 24 pages should put grins on the faces of conservatives of all stripes because it’s almost as if we wrote these eight norms that define how the Net Gen sees the world.

These eight norms are the dominant values Tapscott found among Net Geners, based upon the $4 million marketing research project conducted by Tapscott and his team, first for his company New Paradigm, and then under the authority of nGenera, which bought New Paradigm in 2007.

The project included interviews with nearly 10,000 people, and resulted in more than 40 separate proprietary reports, several conferences and multiple private briefings for executives with the sponsoring firms. In other words, “Growing Up Digital” is based on extensive concrete research, it’s not mere speculation.

The eight Net Gen norms are freedom, customization, scrutiny, integrity, collaboration, entertainment, speed and innovation. Let’s look at how several of these norms connect with conservative principles. Tapscott found that Net Geners expect freedom, especially in the workplace. “They prefer flexible hours and compensation that is based on their performance and market value, not based on face time in the office.”

But the insistence on individual freedom doesn’t just impact the workplace. Net Geners expect choice everywhere, and why not when they have grown up with a multitude of consumer choices in their daily lives. Think iPOD and the multiplicity of songs available through iTunes.

Thus, choice – which is the core characteristic of freedom – is a Net Gener norm that is fundamentally conservative. Think about that for a moment. Bureaucracies don’t – can’t – value individuals for their performance because bureaucracies measure by mass, regimentation and conformity. And liberalism is all about expanding bureaucracy to use government to solve problems.

As Tapscott observes: “They have grown up with choice. Will a model of democracy that gives them only two choices and relegates them, between elections, to four years of listening to politicians endlessly repeating the same speeches actually meet their needs?”

Or consider customization. Tapscott notes in his discussion of freedom that “Baby Boomers often variety burdensome, but the Net Geners love it.” They also love having the opportunity to adapt, to customize, products to suit their particular needs. Think TiVo, which allows individuals to watch what they want when they want, and to skip through the commercials while doing so.

Is a generation that demands the freedom to choose from among thousands of widgets that provide infinite adaptability likely to be satisfied with a government-run health care system that by definition can provide few choices and for whom customization controlled by individual customers is intrinsically alien? See the opportunity in the conservative emphasis upon a health care system based upon individual empowerment and choice?

Then there is my personal favorite, the idea of scrutiny. Net Geners are not to be fooled. They’ve grown up with an Internet that provides them with limitless information sources, customer reviews, and feedback loops. For the most part, contemporary political rhetoric remains a product of pre-Internet thinking, and is designed to attract mass audiences with minimal specificity. Think political advertising addrressed to the mass audiences of television.

There is a reason television advertising is increasingly irrelevant. Net Geners sail right past the spots. That is why political rhetoric that gains credibility with Net Geners will be the opposite of mass audiencing, with emphasis instead on candor, accountability and transparency. Woe now to the company that tries to sell an inferior product at a time when millions of consumers talk to each other via Facebook and Twitter.

This is why Tapscott says “since companies are increasingly naked, they better be buff.” The same reality applies in the political world where most contemporary politicians have yet to realize just how exposed they are, thanks to instantly accessible voting records, campaign donors and financial disclosures.

And officials who think they will be protected by the traditional anonymity of bureaucracy haven’t heard of USASpending.gov, which is merely the first installment of an Internet-inspired transparency revolution at all levels of governnance. So which philosophy is more likely to appeal to Net Geners, the one that depends upon a centralizing, top-down culture of command and conformity or the one that emphsizes individual choice and decentralization?

Let’s look at one more Net Gen norm, collaboration. At first glance, the idea of many individuals collaborating might seem more favorable to the liberal vision of collective action directed by wise officials in government. But I believe the culture of collaboration among Net Geners is the norm that most threatens the liberal moment.

Here’s why: Conservatism is all about individual freedom, decentralizing government and empowering local communities to solve their own problems. Net Geners, Tapscott says, “are natural collaborators, this is the relationship generation.” A generation that expects to be free, to be able to customize and to be able to scrutinize authority is also a generation that is discovering a multitude of ways in which the Internet empowers what used to be called the “thousand points of light.”

I believe the Netroots theoreticians of the Left see this characteristic of the Internet as their key to making collectivism work. Centralized government will embody in its policies the wisdom of crowds by using the Internet to integrate political activism with the policy-making process. But that is exactly why liberals are doomed to fail in the Internet age because the dominant values of the Net Geners empower individuals, not collectives.

And that’s the heart of the conservative opportunity. It’s not guaranteed by any means and it could be derailed by a number of factors. But conservatives can capture the future if they remain true to their own basic principles while speaking of them in the language of the Net Geners and proposing policies that encourage that generation’s dominant values.