So, I was listening to an interesting “On Point With Tom Ashbrook” from NPR during my various runnings around tonight whilst they discussed young people in the digital age. They were largely talking about how youth today, whether in middle school or college are constantly “connected” via text messaging, e-mail, Facebook and IM. The discussion was sparked by a recent study saying that having your kids on the internet all the time may not be a bad thing, necessarily (a link to the study is on the On Point website).
It didn’t really get me thinking about anything specific, but a little about my history with similar forms of “connectedness.” My oldest IM name is alinsenb17…which means I started it when I was 17…which means that I will have been using AIM for a decade next year (eeesh!). Before that, I was already e-mailing “pen pals” of sorts and using another chat program, ICQ, that I don’t really use anymore (if I remember right, I was using ICQ for a good amount of time before AIM, meaning that I’ve actually been IMming for longer than 10 years already).
It’s also rather crazy just how many people are online at a given time, and generally available to “chat.” At the time of this writing (9:00 PM CST), there are 14 people on my Facebook Chat, 12 on Google Chat, 2 on MSN Messenger, and 7 on AIM. Nice way to stay connected, and still kinda crazy that all these people still use IM services when text messaging has largely taken over for instant messaging via computer. There was a time, back in my first year at Truman, where I’d have 9 AIM windows open at one time, with 9 separate conversations going at once…which was (obviously) difficult to manage.
I guess the part that really intrigues me about this is that I’ve been doing IM for 10 years, and e-mail for a little longer, and there are still people that don’t have computers, let alone an e-mail account, let alone an IM account of some form. I realize it’s a “different generation,” but I wonder how it’ll all, eventually, equal out. We’re already starting to see some integration of all these protocols, where one can couple their Facebook status with text messaging, or both of those with their Twitter account (which is a separate beast entirely).
Will it come to a point where all of these separate forms of communication (social networking, text messaging, e-mail, IM, voice/video chat) are all integrated into a single protocol? Where someone can communicate with someone else with the touch of a button?
Oh wait…that’s called a “telephone“…