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The growth of knowledge-based economies is now presupposed by education policies globally and increasing the quantity and quality of education is considered essential for the economic prosperity of individuals and nations. In this context, promises that better futures await those who succeed in education exert increasing force on imaginations in the present, including through education policies that promote aspiration-raising agendas. Aspiration, optimism and motivation involve 'affects' (emotions) that education seeks to foster and through which contemporary governance and control is exercised. This paper contrasts Margaret Mead's analysis of the generation gap that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s with contemporary marketing industry descriptions of Generation Y and iGeneration. Mead presents an optimistic view of the experiences and imaginations of young people as forces of cultural reinvention, while the latter provides an instrumental perspective on the experiences of young people as an access point through which marketers can modulate social imaginaries. Drawing on Scott Lash's argument that social imaginaries are increasingly constituted as topological objects, the paper examines some similarities between contemporary marketing and educational strategies that target the imaginations of young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]