Technology Age Gap
(Photo by storm_gal)
I like to think of myself as an early-adopter when it comes to technology. Much to the bane of my wife, I love the latest greatest and pine over the newest gadgets and technology. Yet there’s a big difference in the way my demographic, and the kids–college and younger–communicate/collaborate with people.
I’ll use my dad as an example to better illustrate. My dad was in the middle of the pioneering age of the computer industry. He was an early adopter too (probably where I got it) in the 80’s and 90’s, working in San Jose and San Francisco during the birth and boom of Silicon Valley. He bought his first computer in 1987 and got us online on a 1200 baud modem soon after. In the next 15 years he worked in Engineering and IT, so dad’s no luddite. But if I asked him to rate in order of priority how he communicates and collaborates with people remotely he would probably say:
- I use e-mail primarily to stay in touch with, and collaborate with friends and colleagues
- I make calls on my cell phone
- I make calls on my land line phone
- I send texts occasionally (in the US – when he’s in the Philippines, he texts all the time)
- I occassionally use a chat client
- I signed up on Facebook 6 months ago
Yet if you asked the same question to college-age kids and younger, it would actually be reverse:
- I use my Facebook account to send messages and stay in touch with friends
- I text my friends all day
- I use IM to chat online with friends
- I use my cell phone (non-texts)
- I check my email maybe once a day, if that
- I don’t have a land-line phone…why would I want one?
E-mail is Dead
You mileage will of course, vary, and I am somewhere between these two ways of thinking. But bottom line, the trend is the death of e-mail and the migration towards social networking. And I would agree with that. For many, e-mail is broken. It is ridden with spam, which makes it a security liability. It’s a horribly inefficient chat client/texting medium, which some people use it for: short one-line replies back and forth. It’s bad for sending files back and forth. The future of our world – the college age and younger – see no reason to use e-mail other than to have something to use to sign up for online accounts. So what do you suppose will happen when these kids enter the workforce…then later become heads of the workforce?
Hello, Social Networking
Facebook, the largest social network, is a good example of the way things are going to be. It’s an address book, chat client, blog, private messaging, public messaging, photo-sharing, video-sharing, forum. There are company groups, school groups, family groups, interest groups – all of which you can join and be a part of. It’s an all-in-one package for many, and I’m willing to bet the future will see Facebook, or something like it become further the center of how we communicate with the rest of the world.
Resistance is Futile
Mom and dad will come around – they are beginning to already. My dad was telling me the other day how his god-child, whom he hasn’t seen since she was a baby (and now 34), found him on Facebook, and my aunt said that she has been connecting with college classmates whom she hasn’t heard from in 40 years–through her Facebook account.
Those are just my thoughts, observations, and predictions for the future of communication in our world. Just another post that I can look back on and laugh at how horribly wrong I was.
Good article. Some of this stuff is pretty obvious: text and IM and social networking is new generation stuff. But perhaps the most interesting is your condemnation of e-mail. For some reason, I have it in my mind that e-mail is a superior form of communication over using the messages on a social networking site. I resist using them, perhaps because they are closed systems. Remember when you could only e-mail people who were on your ISP? I don’t, but supposed that used to be the case. However, I don’t use e-mail to communicate with ANY of my friends. I don’t have their addresses in my address book and if I ever wanted to e-mail them, I don’t know if I could find it. Most of my communication happens over IM and friends I don’t IM with, I lose contact with.
But now that you mention that e-mail is an obsolete medium for communication I almost agree. Social networking is easier to contact friends and acquaintances because there is less overhead to managing your network and it’s stored in a central location and it stores history.
A world without email, although it sounds blasphemous, is probably where we are headed. It still has a place, as an anonymous way to contact someone. For all the reasons we hate spam, the format of e-mail has its benefits.
Last thought: do I need to put my e-mail address on my business card if I have a link to my linked-in profile?
I didn’t know we had internet that long ago, 1987? Yep, I definitely would say I use Facebook as my main way of communication. Although, chat would be at that bottom, I never chat. What’s even more awesome is that I don’t even have a laptop of my own (mainly just use Nem’s when I have to), so I just use my iPhone for e-mail, web-browsing, and Facebook.
Yeah, the most interesting thing in this post is your statement that e-mail will be gone in our near future. It makes sense, except that it seems to hold a higher form of professionalism that social networking sites like Facebook don’t hold. Can you imagine writing your co-workers, or even your BOSS, a business e-mail through Facebook? It’s not that it’s a ridiculous concept, it’s just a strange concept.
But yeah, it does look like e-mail is pretty obsolete. If only you could attach files to Facebook messages, I would definitely have an easier time accepting social networking sites as a main form of communication.
The biggest beef I have of today’s forms of communication is people now are grammatically inept or lack the discipline to use proper grammar. In areas like game chat, it’s okay since speed is necessary. However, in places like normal chat and even texting these days, you can use good grammar. I hate it when I’m chatting with someone and they decide that correcting a typo, using commas and periods, and using real words (or the correct word – “there” vs. “they’re”/”their”) instead of abbreviations isn’t necessary. I’m not surprised that there are people out there who are just AWFUL at writing, but I am definitely disappointed.
Texting & social networking is killing face-to-face or vocal communication (actually “talking” to each other). And that’s the shame of it all. We’re raising a generation who won’t be capable to talk to each other professionally or express their thoughts & feelings through speaking. Also, just like Lem said, we’ll see more awful writing in the near future. I’m already seeing that now. Lot’s of people on Facebook & email send me notes w/ incorrect spelling or grammar. Not that I’m an expert in the English language but come on!!!
New technology is not always a good thing.