What's wrong with the Generation Y debate

I've been thinking a lot about the debate over whether Gen Y has a particular way of working, and whether it is the best or worst thing to hit the business world in EVER.  Partly I've been thinking about this because I am a Gen Y-er, relatively new to the corporate world, and in a position where I get to test out new tools and ways of working.  And partly its because precious few magazines, journals, and blogs get published these days without making some comment about the issue.  So I've been thinking a lot about it and I've come to a realization: that the whole premise of the argument is flawed.

It's flawed in 2 ways: 

1. There is an incorrect assumption that all (or even most) Gen Y-ers have a particular way of working 
2. There seems to be an implicit assumption that this is the first generation to have their own views on the world, or that they are the first to bring significant change to the workforce.  

Lets look at each of these problems in a bit more depth.

I know plenty of people born after 1980 (the usual cut-off for the beginning of Gen Y) who find no value in bringing web 2.0 tools to the workplace.  I also know plenty of them who do not expect to be treated any differently than the rest of their colleagues.  Many of them do expect to have their ideas judged on the strength of the idea and not because of their position in the corporate hierarchy, but I don't think this is unique to my generation since I'm pretty sure Socrates hinted at the idea once or twice. 

I have not done extensive research, but I would bet a dollar or two that every generation brings some change to the workforce.  You don't have to look that far back (the early 1990s) to find a debate about proper business attire.  In fact this debate took place just about exactly when the Gen X-ers were coming onto the scene in force. What's different this time is that the pace of change has sped up because this change is technological, and at the speed of technological change no one, not Gen Y, not Gen X, and not boomers, have time to keep up with everything.  And that makes the struggle to identify what is valuable and what is not extremely difficult.

So it seems to me that instead of debating whether the way that Gen Y works, or what they expect from the organization and whether they should be accommodated, we should start discussing how much, with new technologies, ways of working, and the ability for people to get work done outside of both the office and the standard 9-5 schedule, we can let employees decide how best to get the job done, and how much we need standard processes, activities and oversight.  Only when we have that debate will we actually begin to see some value from these new processes that are being proposed by employees, Gen Y included.