For professional trend forecasters, a generation (as in Generation X, or Y) is less a collection of individuals than a commodity: to be processed into a manufactured unit, marketed and sold to clients. To get there first and define the next next generation is like staking a claim in a gold rush.

Perhaps this explains why, even as most marketers and demographers are busy enough trying to wrap their heads around Generation Z, the postmillennial generation of teenagers and tweens, some forecasters are already trying to define the essence of the generation beyond.

You know: toddlers, babies, the unborn.

For years, Mark McCrindle, a generational researcher and corporate consultant in Australia, has been trying to get a sociocultural read on the post-Generation Z tidal wave of consumers, never mind that many of them are still in onesies, if they have even been born at all. Generation Alpha, anyone?

Here’s his take on the cohort, such as it is, in an interview conducted over email, and edited for space and clarity.