You have been commodified,
Digitized of sorts,
Cleverly identified,
As a string of ones and naughts.
You have been commercialized,
Packaged up as stock,
Uniformly standardized,
So your pieces interlock.
You have been configured,
Codified and mapped,
Carefully considered,
As potential to adapt.
. You are the generation, named without a name,
. Be you X or Y, we have made you all the same!

© Tim Grace, 27 September 2010

---

To the reader: The younger generations, we have crafted them as different; for that has served our purpose. From early childhood they have been primed for the marketplace and now they pay the price; they have been commodified. The nameless generations of X and Y have been so individualized that they are powerless to act in concert as a collective independent agent. They resort to social media for voice but that itself is a construction of those who would strip them of identity.

To the poet: The globalized economy has impacted on how we express the human condition. Life has become digitized, commercialized, and standardized; commodified, identified, and codified. As we describe ourselves we are likely to live. The use of ‘you’ as a distinctive label helps in the creation of distance and separation. From the narrator’s perspective the deal has been done; the package has been sold.

---

 

commodified