Business Technology: Teens' Inscrutable AdventuresBusiness Technology: Teens' Inscrutable Adventures

If someone mentions to you the word "teen-agers," what comes to mind? Monosyllabic answers to questions like, "How was school today?" The ability to consume 6,000 calories per day? Confusion or clarity? Insights or limited experience? Self-centeredness or a profound sense of fairness? Awkwardness or limitless potential?

A friend from Japan--he's in his sixties and was a mainstream IT professional for much of his life--told me recently about how he sits, transfixed, on the trains and subways in Japan these days and watches young teen-agers communicate vividly and emotionally with each other from a few feet apart--via E-mail over their cell phones. "They say that in another year or so they will be beaming video messages to each other," he says, "and the funny thing is, none of them thinks that will be a big step." Another friend runs a massive imaging laboratory within the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and has mastered some of the most mind-boggling video, imaging, and electron-microscopy equipment this side of a sci-fi movie. And from what source does this well-plugged-in high-tech scientist find out about the really cool stuff happening these days with personal technology and the Web? His 13-1/2-year-old daughter, of course. "I've tried to figure out how she does it, how she knows all this," my friend says, "and the best answer I can come up with is, she and other kids her age just think differently than we do."