Full fathom five thy father lies: Of his bones are coral made: Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.
-William Shakespeare, The Tempest And just when we were getting comfortable. Via the couldn't-be-more-aptly-named Sea Change comes this fabulous chart of different online activities by age group. Take a look at that thing. While "Collectors" are strikingly distributed throughout the population curve, there's an amazing phenomenon in every other category of engagement: Under-27s are qualitatively more participatory than everyone else, even their immediate elders. You'd probably expect folks born in the Truman Administration to rock the geek a little less than the Wii-implant generation. No surprise, that. But across the board, half of the dropoff from "Generation Y" to "Older Boomers" occurs between ages 26 and 27. Here's what I mean.

Activity	Generation Y	(Dropoff)	Generation X	(Dropoff)	Older Boomers
Creation	30%	-11	19%	-12	7%
Criticism	34%	-9	25%	-10	15%
Joining	57%	-28	29%	-21	8%
Spectating	54%	-13	41%	-15	26%

Granted, age bracketing is inherently arbitrary and debatable, and presumably 27-year-olds' behavior is closer to 26-year-olds than it is to 40-year-olds. Nevertheless, the chart maps a qualitative change on the horizon in the role of communications media. Missing here is a data point supplied by the New Politics Institute's just-released study of the "Millenial Generation": As Marty Kearns notes apropos of Zack Exley's "Don't Hire an Internet Person" call for getting staff out of the "Internet person" ghetto:

The campaign or nonprofit is organizing in our culture. The culture shift is changing everything. Our culture is increasingly networked and online. The organization or campaign needs a senior management team that works to capture and channel modern networks of supporters to create the change we seek.

That's a generational shift not to be underestimated, demanding some vision and perspective among sector leaders in the face of the older-skewing demographics of charitable donors. And, for that matter, of formerly comfortable charitable staff like me.