For some reason I don’t quite understand, as someone who finds dashing of an e-mail hard and instant messaging a nightmare, I found this extract from an interview with Don Tapscott on Tom Peters’ site quite reassuring:
“… kids are the leading indicators and they’re driving a lot of this. I mean, one of the youngsters, a 20-year-old female university student, is living in Paris studying at the Sorbonne. She’s a Syrian, and her boyfriend is in Toronto. So they turn on Skype all day long to maintain the relationship, cooking together and stuff like that.
I asked her, ‘Do you use email?’ And she said, ‘Well, no, not really. That’s sort of yesterday’s technology.’ I said, ‘What do you use?’ She said, ‘Well, I use Skype and I use instant messaging, and I use Facebook social networking.’ I said, ‘Would you use email?’ She said, ‘That’s sort of a formal technology like sending a thank-you note to one of your friends’ parents.’..”