Communication at the speed of light

You know I have heard from many people how Gen X or Gen Y or whatever they are called is different than those who have gone before them.  Tonight that difference was really driven home to me.  We had our fantasy football draft tonight. I have been running a league for 4 years now made up primarily of some of the guys at StillSecure.  We have a good mix of people from younger guys all the way up to the old folks like me.  As the commissioner of the league I organized and set up the draft.  We use the Yahoo! fantasy football application and the on line draft is a really slick web app that gives you a ton of information on the players available, who is drafting who and so on.  There is also a chat window for people in the draft.  In addition to the draft application, I also set up a conference dial in number so we could all talk to each other.

I noticed that most of the younger guys were not on the dial in conference.  Instead they were communicating via the messenger window.  Some of us on the phone conference tried to message with the guys on line.  By the time we had typed out our long messages the guys were already 5 messages past this.  All of their messages were short, not even full sentences.  However, they were able to get across their points and the depth and breath of their conversation was constant.  In contrast our phone conversations were rambling on but did not have as much information compressed in it. 

After the draft I spoke about this with Larry Middle our CFO and one of the old farts.  We both realized that it was almost like they young guys were talking a different language.  Thinking on it further, it was not a different language they were speaking, but at a different velocity. I realized that looking at the emails that the younger guys send, the emails are also short and staccato.  They email the way they instant message.  Short to the point and move on to the next one. No time for niceties or build up.  Say what you need to and move on. 

Is this a bad thing or a good thing?  I don't know for sure, but it is a different thing. I look at my children, 6 and 8 and already using the computer.  What kind of communication medium will they favor.  It is almost evolution before your eyes. Does the technology determine the communication behavior or does the communication behavior just find the technology that suits it best? 

Maybe we could be like the Duke brothers in the Eddie Murphy film "Trading Places".  Lets switch a young guy and old guy and make them trade the way they communicate and see what happens.  Not sure if this all makes sense, but it is obvious to me that the way younger people communicate and use the technology today is different than people of my generation.