Tomorrow is a Brighter Day

And they feel far more connected personally to the rest of the world. They expect to travel to exotic locales such as Cape Town and Dubai. "A quarter of them think they'll end up living for some significant period in a country other than America," Zogby notes. When asked about the propriety of "an imperialist power that acts on its own regardless of what the rest of the world thinks," 86 percent of First Globals labeled such conduct "improper/somewhat improper"; only 3 percent considered it "somewhat proper/proper." No other demographic group in his study "had a greater spread between the two extremes," Zogby comments. These responses signify the group's determination "to find a middle ground on the hot-button issues of the day."

Such a data-laden book could be boring, but Zogby laces it with amusing anecdotes throughout. In one, he recounts a conversation with a 20-year-old restaurant worker in Utica, N.Y., about her concept of personal privacy in the new YouTube world:

"I asked our waitress about her own limits on what she would reveal," Zogby reports.

" 'My boobs,' she answered, not terribly demurely, 'but only on Halloween, and only for my friends.' "

Zogby replied, "Well, I'm your friend today, but tomorrow I might not be. Can you stop me from sharing your, um, breasts with the rest of the world, or with the company you're hoping will hire you?"

"No," countered the server, "but so many of us do this in one form or another that employers are just going to have to adjust or they won't have anyone left to hire."

As the server moved to another table, Zogby recalled thinking, "What's bad for beauty queens and teenage ingénues today becomes business as usual the day after tomorrow."

Zogby also believes that young people, "so willing to share even intimate details with a global community" over the Internet, will become increasingly multilateralist in their worldview. That change alone won't bring about a perfect world, of course, but it is bound to improve upon the nationalism that for so many years sparked conflict and war. ·

Steve Weinberg's most recent book is "Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller."