A twitter post: “5th grader wants to know if there’s WiFi at the campground.”

It’s not just that he’s asking, its that he even would expect this.  We all like to talk about profound shifts, but to truly understand them you need comments like this…or to watch your daughter grab your phone when talking to someone and be confused why she cant’ see them on the video screen… or how I have fingerprints all over my laptop screen.

We’ve all seen this play out in someway with our kids… they will grow up in a world where high speed wireless connectivity is not just asked for or expected.. it will be assumed.  Your data will follow you everywhere.  Your contacts, payments, shopping history all there.  Much like when most of us grew up the “computer” was just penetrating the mainstream homes and you can still remember MS DOS and cell phones the size of bricks…programming the Lotus turtle to draw a circle was a big deal.  Now my son is downloading instructions to build Legos on the iPad and watching science experiment videos on YouTube.  Their “understanding” of technology won’t be an understanding at all – it will just be.

As the current generation of millenials moves in the workforce and higher purchase power stage of life, this is the type of assumptions we need to make about how technology will impact us and business in the future, and what types of demands we will place on technology – a “smartphone” will be an antique novelty item in 10yrs… just like a StarTac.