Cubing generations

Sajwo said:
I think it might be possible in ~50 years. Sad thing is that we don't even know if WCA will survive such a long time
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It probably will though it may go through a cyclic rebirth as cubing goes in and out of fashion. It may be interesting to see if cubers of this generation (and maybe gen 4) would be very encouraging of their kids to five from a young age because that would be a first that has not really happened en force as there weren't really enough people who could speedsolve properly (in gen 1 everyone was crazy about cubes but not all (in fact most did not) have a relatively effective speedcubing method.

Actually, that links quite nicely to the second part of my disscussion point: what do you think future generations will be defined by? And how long will each of them last/ persist?
 
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I think a better way to cater use is by who the newer cubers look up to. When they start the world record holders. This only replies to post 2003.

I also think hardware can only really be in two caterioes for 3x3. Old style and mordern. The first mordern cube is the GuHong. Which was completely new at the time.
 
I really like this thread. Honestly, something I'm noticing is that all of these proposals for generations, despite having different reasoning, all point to around the same thing. This just shows that these 5 basic generations are all the more real, because they stand out from each other for more than one reason. We can argue about the reasoning behind our particular variations (hardware, speed, community size, etc.), but I think we should be going towards compiling everyone's reasons for each generation, and giving very general years that they each take place in. This would pretty much make a perfectly elaborate list of the generations.

I'm currently too lazy, considering it's 7:44 in the morning where I live, but I'd be interested in working on that soon. :p
 
I'd say that the generations vary by region. In South Africa specifically, I'd say there are only four generations. There's the first generation who started during the 1981 craze, the second generation who started in the 1990's and 2000's. Then there's the generation who started in 2010-2013 who make up the majority of experienced cubers in South Africa. Finally there's the current generation which are getting into cubing thanks to more media exposure (especially after Mats and Feliks visit at the end of 2014) and more frequent competitions.
 
qwertycuber said:
Do any of you think there will be a generation where the records are really impossible to beat?
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Absolutely. If they could always be broken, all the records would eventually be close to 0 seconds. There has to be a point where people reach a plateau and the records can no longer be broken. I just don't know how long that'll be.
 
AlphaSheep said:
I'd say that the generations vary by region. In South Africa specifically, I'd say there are only four generations. There's the first generation who started during the 1981 craze, the second generation who started in the 1990's and 2000's. Then there's the generation who started in 2010-2013 who make up the majority of experienced cubers in South Africa. Finally there's the current generation which are getting into cubing thanks to more media exposure (especially after Mats and Feliks visit at the end of 2014) and more frequent competitions.
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Actually, that's a really good point that I never really considered.

I wonder what the other regional variations might look like.
 
I'm similar... I got my first cube in 1981 (here's the proof... :-) I was seven).

At that time I learned just to solve a side. In 2007 I decided to learn to solve the cube, but gave up on learning the last layer algorithms. I finally learned to solve the whole thing around 2011/2012. So I guess I could claim membership of a few generations, depending on how it's defined...
 
bubbagrub said:
I'm similar... I got my first cube in 1981 (here's the proof... :-) I was seven).

At that time I learned just to solve a side. In 2007 I decided to learn to solve the cube, but gave up on learning the last layer algorithms. I finally learned to solve the whole thing around 2011/2012. So I guess I could claim membership of a few generations, depending on how it's defined...
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Personally I would put you in gen 4 cause that's when you properly decided to cube and didn't give up.

I think there are actually very few gen-1 or 2 cubers cause there were many that thought it was awesome to solve but there weren't many widely known methods and even fewer actually learned them.
 
"I think there are actually very few gen-1 ... cubers 'cause .... there weren't many widely known methods and even fewer actually learned them"
There were huge numbers of 'gen-1' cubers back then, it was a national obsession (in the U.K), and the lack of methods wasn't really a problem, most people used 'easy to learn' beginners methods (usually LBL/ keyhole + 4LLL; or 'corners then edges'), and you could get down into the 30's that way. There were plenty of books published at the time, too, if you were interested, some of which contained some more advanced techniques.
It's the ease of remembering/re-learning a beginners method that kept me cubing.
 
SenorJuan said:
"I think there are actually very few gen-1 ... cubers 'cause .... there weren't many widely known methods and even fewer actually learned them"
There were huge numbers of 'gen-1' cubers back then, it was a national obsession (in the U.K), and the lack of methods wasn't really a problem, most people used 'easy to learn' beginners methods (usually LBL/ keyhole + 4LLL; or 'corners then edges'), and you could get down into the 30's that way. There were plenty of books published at the time, too, if you were interested, some of which contained some more advanced techniques.
It's the ease of remembering/re-learning a beginners method that kept me cubing.
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My reasoning was that there weren't really many people who tried for speed. They just knew how to solve it and that was enough.

I wasn't alive then so I guess I could be wrong tho
 
A significant percentage tried for speed. Not many tried hard at actually solving it, as a puzzle. And those would usually give up, especially as there were widely-distributed crib-sheets of key algorithms to tempt you, and always some kid who could sub-50 to give you some incentive. So dozens of us would gather in head-to-head races, maybe sharing a few 'hot' moves you'd picked up from someone else (or keeping them to yourself if they were really good!).
As an example of how obsessed we were: Our Art class was set a project to design some 'retail packaging' for a product of our choice. I'm sure 20 out of 30 chose the cube as their 'product'.
 
If I looked into DGCubes and Sajwo's distinctions:

DG: 3rd gen
Sajwo: 2nd gen

I started in about 2008 and kept working with puzzles from there. I didn't start speedcubing like a maniac until 2012.
 
Interesting thread. Here's my thoughts. Generations should be defined by what motivated the people (in general) and what they strove for and achieved. Hardware shouldn't define it; good hardware is an outcome not a cause.

First gen were driven by the consumer boom in the early 80s. I don't really see someone who started in 1990 belonging in another generation, since there was nothing new going on then. They were just late gen1.

Second gen were the people in the 90s who were passionate and visionary enough to get connected, develop cubing both theoretically and as a competitive sport, and work together to eventually establish the 2003 WC and the WCA. I'm not sure when that started, but to me that's the most important phase in cubing and those people deserve a generation of their own.

Third gen are people who joined when there is already a competitive framework set up with a governing body and organised competitions. The sport and events have been established, records have been set as targets, the framework is already there for them to compete and get involved. They are (mostly) only participating, not building or breaking new ground like gen2.

Not much is really different between say 2006 and 2016 except for scale and accessibility, which are hard things to use to define generational boundaries, so that's it, just the 3 generations for me :)
 
I would call myself 2nd gen of revival.

1st gen is the 80s or whatever. 2nd gen is the lost years.

Then there's revival

1st gen is the founding of WCA. 2nd gen is around first sub 10, so starting in like 2007, which was a wee bit after I started really getting into it; modding preexisting slow puzzles for speed was still a huge deal and dedicated speedcubes were in their early years. 3rd gen is Dayan revolutionizing 3x3 cube technology and continuing explosion in popularity. Now we may still be 3rd gen or maybe there's a 4th gen, with the fall of Dayan.
 
I got my 1st cube in like 1984. I loved to race against my friends to see who would solve a face faster. Then I learned to solve the whole cube and I was around 1:15 more or less with beginners method. My best time was 48 seconds with a partial LL skip. After some years enjoying it, life got in the middle and I lost my two Rubik's cubes, probably at my parents' house. Now I'm 45 and 2,5 years ago, in 2013, I started to get interested in cubing again, after watching some videos so I decided to buy a couple Zhanchi's for me and my son. We both learned CFOP, but I'm the only one of the two that persisted and now I can call myself a speedcuber (even though I have never been to a comp).

So, I'd say I'm from the old days but really started to get serious during the "Feliks" era.
 
DGCubes said:
I see generations of cubing like this:
1st generation: 1980s, like you described
2nd generation: cubing "dark ages", as described by cmhardw
3rd generation: the revival, from around 2003 to 2008. Pretty much when cubing was starting up again and there weren't too many advancements hardware-wise.
4th generation: I'm going to call this the DaYan generation, from 2009 to 2012, when the DaYan cubes got big, there were some okay speedcubes for other events (like SS big cubes, etc.), and cubing was getting faster and more well-known.
5th generation: the explosion; when cubing got WAY bigger, from 2013 to now. It could be characterized by the release of many modern (non-DaYan) speedcubes, cubing YouTubers getting a lot bigger (I remember around the beginning of this time period when 30K or 40K was about the maximum, and look at people like CBC and RedKB now), and many more competitions and new competitors around the world (2013 had 359 competitions and 2015 had 572).

According to this, I'd be part of the 4th generation. I remember very well seeing the first videos of non-DaYan 3x3s (like the ShuangRen and HuanYing) right when they were released, although I was pretty new to cubing at that point. I started in mid-2012, so I'm late 4th gen.
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According to this model, I started in early 5th generaton ( I'm a relatively new cuber), then I took a half year break, and right now I'd call late 5th generation' maybe 5 1/2 generation with new wr holders like Collin Burns (former wr 5.25) Rami Sbahi (former 2x2 wr 0.58) and later on, Lucas Etter ( 4.9 3x3 single and 2x2 average 1.51). In this 5 1/2th generation, we see new puzzles on the market like Cong's Design puzzles or GuoGuan cubes. We might be coming to a 6th generation soon, with more sub-5 singles hopefully, people who are new cubers now becoming world class champions, and someone maybe, just maybe breaking Felik's long-standing 6.54 3x3 world record average. A sixth generation might also mean advances in hardware and pushing limits in big cube design. Recently Corenpuzzle made a 22x22, let's see if we can go bigger. Moyu has a mass- produced 13x13, I'll be excited for bigger cubes by them or other companies like Yuxin, Shengshou,or even V-cube. Let's see if there will be a new-coming sixth generation. Who knows?
 
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