Fred Wilson started the day off (well maybe not his day, but it was one of the first things I read at the beginning of my day) with a very thought provoking post on what his kids tell him about the future of media.   Now his children are a bit older than mine and are much more entrenched into the media culture of the day, so what they are experiencing and how they are using the media today will only change again when my children are old enough to really take advantage of what is out there.

With that being said, things are changing at a rapid pace, and it is a direct result of the emerging technologies that are being developed as we speak. We, as an industry, are creating technologies / tools / devices for specific purposes in mind, mostly that of how the specific thing would best suit us. The children of today are turning that notion completely on its head, they are coming up with different ways to use the same devices / tools/ technologies that we are developing for entirely different purposes. Interesting, some created that can have two completely different uses, one of which was anticipated, the other perhaps not.

Those companies that can digest and embrace the different uses of their products and set a road map in place to satisfy both demographics stand a very good chance of really moving the needle (sorry for the gratuitous catch phrase there, but it seemed fitting) and opening the door for future enhancements on ways to use things that we never thought of before.

Justin Thorp has a similar post today where he talks about the same subject matter (perhaps prompted by Fred’s post, but I will let Justin be the final word on that), but he makes a good point around the fact that by visiting any local middle school you will see the future in action in the present tense. I have a few nieces and nephews that fall into this age bracket and he hit the nail on the head. They use their cell phone / iPod/ the web in ways that seem almost foreign to me, but I bet they would say the same thing about the way I use the exact same devices.

We are amidst some very exciting times from a media perspective and I cannot wait to see what the future holds, especially by the time my children reach the age where they are using the same devices that I am (hopefully I will still be hip then) and how we are using them differently / the same.