I have the eyebrow-raising honor and immense pleasure of being father to four children, all girls, who's ages span a quarter of a century. I am now into my third (quarter of a century), enjoying the realization that the more one knows, the more there still is to know and discover, including, and mostly, from one's offspring. Any mildly attentive parent has - hopefully - experienced that nirvanic feeling of seeing both the world and themselves through their child's eyes, and gained fascinating perspective in the process. As an avid user, observer and commentator of/on life and technology, my kids are the golden geese of user-experience data points and priceless insights, accentuated in my case by their temporal spread. Being with them and melding into their worlds (insofar as they will let me), be they toddlers or young adults, is probably the closest I or anyone will ever get to time travel.
These things therefore, I now know to be not absolutely but mostly and increasingly true: Facebook is for old people. Old, narcissistic voyeurs to be more precise. Email will follow fax is following typed letters and quill-penned parchments into documentary history. Wikis, google docs, drop-boxes and the like are pioneering forays into the new world of truly shared and beautifully liberated information, but we haven't seen the real breakthrough just yet (we're not even at Betamax vs VHS). MS-Office documents are information prison cells. Document management systems are little better than shared drives or any other storage medium and they are all the prisons. Microsoft will go the way of Novell (MS is bigger so it will take much longer - it wouldn't suprise me if their next play was major consulting). The smartphone has not yet peaked in its ability to integrate multiple, increasingly vital functions of our lives, but that too will rise and then level off, just like the height of sky-scrapers and the speed of air-travel. When you think about it, the Blackberry was always destined to die. Apple is nearing the end of its current s-curve and urgently needs a paradigm shift to maintain dominance (some have tried to imply that Apple is for old people but not successfully). Samsung smartphones just aren't that good or original - the difference is that they spend more on marketing than most of the world's countries do on running themselves (and that's a true statement) . The internet of things is very exciting but hugely fragmented for now and due for large-scale consolidation (witness the recent purchase of Nest - more to come there). Laptop computers as we know them now are on the way out, following the trend already set by traditional desktops, and if either survive it'll be in an unrecognizable format, especially OS-wise (tablets used with bluetooth keyboards are just the first example of this ground-gaining shift). The extraordinary gap between home and office technology will continue to close, as it is already with iPhones replacing BBs as officially endorsed corporate devices. Traditional ERP is going to die too (yay!) but all too slowly (boo). Growing pains aside, Workday can and should be a genuine game changer. Transactional data and substantive content are becoming less and less distinct; the transmogrification of constructs as simple as invoices is already underway. Real innovation truly is a garage thing, at least in mentality, and cannot be bought or mandated: money can help but is no guarantee (The only thing that Google+ and Garage have in common are two gs). Young peoples' ability to filter and ignore advertising on line (and on TV, for that matter) is growing; marketing paradigms will struggle to adapt. And so, everything we think is for sure really isn't - a big shift is brewing and some major trends are about to emerge and change how we do things yet again. If I knew exactly what I'd be very wealthy, but I feel the wind unmistakably.
Did I get all that from my kids? Well ok, some of it is mine, but definitely under their influence. Still, most is theirs: the older two are both business analysts, one of them fast becoming a process re-engineering and business effiiceny specialist, persuading her multinational employer to avoid defunct solutions (like lifeless, old-school ERP) and successfully implementing several of an emerging palette of highly effective tools such as K2, Podio, the Atlassian suite, Basecamp and many more. The other has moved from re-designing billing systems into creative marketing, and is helping her firm target younger audiences through mechanisms they relate to, with quality information they relate to, rather than carpet-bombing them with phony messages which are immediately recognized as such, on any open channel available. Both young ladies are of course highly connected, but you can't get them to respond to an email in under a week. They communicate avidly through apps I've never heard of, IM'ing with whatsapp predominantly for now (yes, I have that one), but always probing for something better. My 14-year old is an artist, has always shied away from math and science, but since discovering tumblr (and a few others I can't recall) is now writing html with more expertise than a professional and wants to do a web programming course this summer right after her arts camp in the Adirondacks. Document files and emails don't even exist in her deeply-engaged on-line experience, but she gets by fabulously, submitting homework on line, and winning nation-wide essay competitions the while. And the baby, well, I'm not letting her near any electronics for another few years. The child kept quiet in the restaurant or on the plane with cheap cartoons on a phone or tablet just hurts me to watch; ours is engaged, doesn't act up, enjoys the food and interaction and all-round experience. What I learn from her is to be in the moment, observe, breathe and laugh. All I know for sure is that for her, Windows will always be just panes of glass, without the need for a capital W, unless at the beginning of a sentence.
