Courtesy of Boing Boing...

1. The New York Times has this article about "Indigo Kids", which, close as I can tell, is this new-agey notion that there's some recent change in humanity resulting in bunches of kids whose minds work a little differently from the minds of you or I (or, heck, maybe you're one of them. For that matter, maybe I'm one of them. As far as objective descriptors go, I seem to match some of the criteria), causing them to be intuitive, be impatient, be empathic, show high intelligence, and glow purple (If you happen to be able to see auras). Indigoness, they say, tends to present as either being what our schools call "Gifted and Talented" or what our schools call "ADHD", but hip new-agey thinkers are proposing that being "Indigo" is evidence of being a more advanced form of human, the salvation of humanity, maybe they've got psychic powers, and we've really got to nurture them and whatnot. Of course, it sounds a lot like crazy talk to more skeptical people (who one of the NYT's interviewees likened to Muggles. I'd have gone with Saps, see below). But who can tell?

Anyway, this notion, or, at least, the term "Indigo kids" dates to the 1970s. About the same time as...

2. The Tomorrow People (wikipedia, tvtropes), a 70s British Sci-Fi TV series about the emergence of a new subspecies of humanity who were intuitive, impatient, empathic, highly intelligent, and glow purple (Well, not purple, I think, but they did glow from time to time). They were also telepathic, and had the power of teleportation. As well as all the associated weirdness of being British teenagers.

Probably it's just a coincidence. Or, perhaps more likely, both were tapping into some cultural meme that was big at the time. But reading the NYT article, I get this very spooky "OMG! Tomorrow People Are Real!" feeling. Maybe I'll have a nice cup of tea and hope it goes away.

(Oh, and the "saps" thing? It's what the Tomorrow People called plain old homo sapiens.)