Housing and Ageism in Berkeley

AI characterizes Baby Boomers, as born between 1946 -1964, known for their large numbers, household wealth, economic influence, and role in shaping modern social norms.

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Do Boomers also constitute the last generation of a fully human species?

The attachment of post-Boomers to their technologies is marked by a physicality unlike the amorphous cultural “generation gap” distinguishing Boomers from their parents. Amping in intensity for decades, post-Boomers demonstrate a voracious appetite for tech treats and scant awareness how this feasting may be altering human evolution.

One indication of an evolving, post-human species, is post-Boomers’ intolerance of the slow adaptation of Boomers to their technologies. Lots of Boomers don’t like needing multiple apps to negotiate parking in a world that once featured uniform coin-operated meters and prefer working with humans to searching for barcodes to splay under scanners at self-service kiosks. Younger generations often view Boomer techno-dislikes as age-induced disability.

What if Boomers’ resistance was understood not as disability, but as push-back between competing species: the last generation of Homo Sapiens (Boomer Sapiens) and an emerging Bio-Machina Techno Sapiens (Techno Sapiens).

Techno Sapiens exhibit few Boomer Sapiens purchasing patterns and only dimly reflect their music, aesthetics, values, or historical understandings.There are territorial tensions, too. Techno Sapiens desiring homes closer to their employ, for example, find that Boomer Sapiens occupying those niches aren’t dying fast enough. Consider Berkeley. One journalistic investigation reported grimly on Berkeley’s Thousand Oaks area, a “once-vibrant neighborhood…now essentially a retirement community of single-family homes.”

The City of Berkeley’s solution: green-light development targeting empty nesters, namely, “those who now live in the Berkeley Hills and want to downsize to an apartment.” Why not leave your home to age-out in a small unit hived in a massive structure, so that Techno Sapiens can acquire your memory filled, “empty” nest?

A Boomer friend and I recently heard a young UC Berkeley political scientist argue that too many old people run Congress. His asides, met with chuckling approval, signaled the acceptability of characterizing Boomers in ways which, if said about gender or racial groups, wouldn’t be tolerated.I submitted two questions. The first: did he have a working definition of ageism.The second, reminding that when Thaddeus Stevens shepherded the 13^th and 14^th amendments through Congress (1865-1866) he was in his mid-70s, asked whether his model for more youthful governance could ensure a place for seasoned leadership. Neither was selected.

Are reports of post-Boomers disliking eateries that require engaging a QR code to receive food, of Gen Z-ers ditching their devices hoping to capture well-being lost to tech addiction, and a new Gallup survey revealing Gen Z reservations about a full-on embrace of AI glimmerings that the value of Boomer Sapiens’ cultural lineages won’t be completely selected against by Techno Sapiens? Perhaps generational contention can be understood less as push-back between competitors and more a martial arts push-hands where mutually respecting sparring partners learn from each other when to yield and when to resist, and in the exchange find balance. Finding such balance depends upon recognizing value in seasoned lives.

Tina Stevens, a Baby Boomer, is an ancestral niece of “The Great Commoner,” Thaddeus Stevens – a Homo Sapiens. She is also Lecturer Emerita in History at San Francisco State University.