These Kids...Crap, They're Not Kids Anymore

Wanna know what it's like to be 21 years old these days? No, I didn't either. But Business Week tells us:

Right now, Jessi has seven friends on Facebook. I have 205, which is a low number compared to many of my classmates. (But through friends, I'm connected to 4,855 other people.) Now, not all 205 will call me Friday night to hang out. For the most part, they're friends from classes and friends of friends.
...
Jessi isn't even 10 years older than me, yet our methods of social interaction are vastly different. For Jessi, networks such as Facebook are innovative. In the mornings, she reaches for her cell phone and jumps on AIM, and she's "plugged in."

But online networking is just part of everyday life for my friends and me, so we tend not to really notice it. We turn on our computers -- if we ever really turned them off -- the automatic sign-in puts up our AIM Buddy List on the right side of our screen, the Internet opens, and we are instantly connected to a global network of acquaintances through online groups and e-mail. Our Sidekicks or cell phones beep with text messages so that, even away from our computers, we won't miss anything.

Sounds really annoying, doesn't it? (And how many of you, like me, had to look up "Facebook," "Sidekicks," or "social interaction"?)

I cite these stories about these wacky young people not out of some mid-life crisis or the straafing run I'll be making at 40 in a year or two, but rather because those of us whose business it is to identify media trends need to know what is lurking around the corner. The error us old farts make when we envision the future of technology or media or culture, is that we transport ourselves and our attitudes and our media usage trends into the future. This is the fallacy of future forcasting (or FFF, a term which I just invented, and which I pronounce just the way it's spelled). Those who come after us will be defining how media and content are disseminated--and how social and business interactions will take place. So consider yourselves warned.

Again, I can't help but think about just how irriating the future is going to be. But I suppose that's just me--and that's the point. It is just me.