When the decade past has been consigned to the annals of some book gathering dust on a bookshelf, I wonder what people will say about it.

I wonder what people will think of a generation defined by cellphones having cameras and the invention of the Wii. That’s cool, in a way: never at any other point in time has technology advanced as rapidly as this. Before I knew it, I had moved from playing Red Alert in front of television-shaped monitors to playing Red Alert in front of a laptop screen.

In a matter of years I had jumped from walkmans to discmans to MP3s to my cellphone. Everything was getting smaller and better at the same time.

Even blog posts progressed — regressed? — from essays to status updates.

Of course, with the shrinking of gadgets came the shrinking of the world. This decade has made it possible to say that nations are borderless and the world is flat. It has also opened up spaces for separation and isolation. People can now go through an entire day with their headsets over their ears, or pass the time by popping digital bubblewrap. In Japan, it is legal to marry fictional characters.

Now more than ever, it is possible for us to manufacture and live in our own little worlds.

I look back at this decade, the decade I grew up in, and find myself comparing my generation to those that have gone previous. Every decade has got to be defined by something. The ‘50s were defined by leather jackets and Elvis Presley. The ‘90s was defined by the jologs culture.

I’ve always thought that the ‘60s were the coolest. It marked the beginning of youth empowerment. Never before did the youth have such tremendous power to influence history. For the very first time, music, literature, and even fashion was dictated by young people who wanted to express themselves and rebel against the Establishment. They took drugs and ran off to make love in their own communes. It was wild. There’s a saying that goes, “if you can remember anything that happened in the ‘60s, then you weren’t really there.” I think that’s badass.

Then there’s the ‘70s and the ‘80s which, for people like my parents, was a more frightening and sobering version of the previous decade. In the ‘60s, hippies rallied around campfires to sing songs about peace, but they were mostly left in peace. The ‘70s and ‘80s were the period of political repression. If you talked trash about the Establishment, the Establishment will be out to get you. If they get you, you don’t expect to be found ever again. My dad has countless stories of promising young lives cut short by the brutality of authoritarian rule.

But the latter part of the ‘80s was the time for renewed hope. Our history has taught us that you can only piss off a people for so long, and that at some point even guns and tanks will fall against rosaries and flowers. Again, at the forefront of all these developments were the idealistic hearts and minds who believed in the world outside our totalitarian cages. People Power, I contend, would not have been possible without the youth who were willing to sacrifice their futures for it.

I look at these decades past, and I think about how our decade will be remembered.

Because we can look back in time, from the ‘60s to the ‘80s, and say that the youth of those generations stood for something.

A part of me is saying that we didn’t have much to stand for. Our activism has largely been relegated to watching CNN and joining Facebook groups, where being aware already counts as doing something. If you know what’s happening around you, you’re a cut above the rest. The problem is that we’re largely desensitized thanks to our PSPs.

But I refuse to believe that we stood for nothing.

This decade has seen the rise in global temperature and some of the most damaging calamities in history. It has stood witness to at least two wars, a financial crisis, and 9/11. Our country has undergone its most trying times politically and economically since the time of Marcos; eerily enough, we spent most of the decade under the rule of one person. It is impossible to say that we have not been shaped by these events.

This decade has given us many reasons to make a stand, and our generation has answered in many ways. But perhaps, only history will tell us whether our responses were adequate. I hope that when the future learns about us in some session in Araling Panlipunan, they will say that we were more than just our iPods and cellphones.

I hope that they will find something nice to say about us.

(The author is a sophomore at the Ateneo de Manila University. Visit http://james.soriano-ph.com, or mail me at james@soriano-ph.com)