Adoption cannot keep pace. Have you noticed that the youngest generation thinks email is passe? For them, email as a technology does not satisfy their needs most of the time. They know how to use email and are not afraid of it. But, email is not instantaneous. The next generation (is it generation Z?) has grown up with SMS on their phones, video calling through Skype, chatting through Facebook (AOL IM also appears passe), and communicating through their headsets on XBox. Amazingly, dialing a telephone may be passe also. When my son wants to talk to friends, the first thing he will do is put on his Xbox headset because he thinks many of the friends are there and immediately available.
What is most amazing about the situation is not that the next generation is adopting new technology. It is that they are skipping a technology that has yet to be adopted by the oldest generation. It is almost like we can see time lapping itself in our generation. In the past, (think cars, radios, TVs, cell phones), the adoption of technology may have started in a younger generation, but the wave would eventually reach the oldest generation while the youngest was still using it. I can remember the first remote control TV that my grand parents got. At that time everyone was adopting remote controls. Even in recent times, we have seen all generations adopt mobile phones.
I think the first discontinuity of technology adoption may be email, but I can see that there will be others in the future.
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