Sixty-Something: Watching a New Generation Take Hold in the Hamptons

As time goes by new generations come of age. With each new generation come changes that stamp an identification of some of the leading characteristics of the generation. Over the last four hundred years, but especially the last two decades, the east end has witnessed these transfers of power and influence.

It started with the native Americans of the region being challenged by the original settlers from Lynn, Massachusetts in 1640 to the now instant tech oriented ultra-rich folks passing by that old money wealth and taking a grip on east end society.

When us sixty-something folks were young the “nouveau riche” were looked at and scorned by the established social structure as interlopers. They dressed wrong, spoke incorrectly, acted uncouth. They were frozen out of country clubs, women’s clubs and ridiculed. Now we have teenage social influencers doing their thing on numerous social media platforms twenty-four hours a day. With some making big money.

Prior to World War II, an Ivy League education was for only one social class, with education provided to help insure the influence and power of legacy. Nelson Rockefeller was rejected by Princeton and he actually talked about being looked down on as a new money character at Dartmouth.

Today social skills and formal education are almost totally eclipsed by tech skills prowess. It’s the tech folks taking a grip on the paths to huge financial success in the modern world of the twenty-first century. Every month there seems to be a new youngest billionaire ever. This phenomenon has reached out to the Hamptons.

A prime example of the shift in the bedrock of our evolving reality is the ability of so many to work from home via technology and prosper. The idea of going into the office to make it happen is beginning to slip by the wayside, even with all the recent attempts to revive it.

With this change the Hamptons has changed. Now more than ever, transactional business is being done from almost all east end homes purchased in the last ten years. Smart phones and laptops along with tablets are buzzing at such a rate the east end internet sometimes literally shuts down. Even with 5G, Fios, and all sorts of other new developments to deliver the “signal.”

Now older folks are not retiring. Instead in some cases they are hiding their age by working remotely from home.

What us old folks marvel at is how the internet changes the world weekly whereas for our grandparents, electricity took decades. These days when buying a new home one can go for a virtual 3-D tour of the home on a laptop or smartphone.

It is true that the east end is not typical of the whole U.S.A., especially with its newly growing accumulation of huge wealth. It used to be a big deal to see a private jet or helicopter at the EH Town Airport; now they line them up like cars at a used car lot. Yet the tractors still till the farmlands. As those lands increase in value, how much longer can the efforts of the Peconic Land Trust and other such mechanisms stay in place? Will they forever be able to preserve the unique character of the Hamptons as an agrarian culture? Or will the whole east end become sections containing homes and mansions?

Slowly but surely noticeable changes will manifest themselves on the east end. Hopefully things will get better or at least stay the same when it comes to the beaches and parks. Only time will tell what the worship of technology does to the soul of the nation and what the new wealth it creates does to the nation’s core.

Only time will tell what comes after this tech generation. One thing we sixty-something folks know for sure is that these young folks will grow old, and new younger folks will come in and change their world.