The concept of a Results-Only Work Environment has been driven as much by technology as it has by Cali and Jody’s insight, ambition, and  verve. I believe the future of ROWE is symbiotic with the future of technology.

I have had a few recent conversations about technology and the generation gap between the Baby Boomers (born, approximately, between 1946 and 1964), Gen X’ers (between 1965 and 1980), Generation Y (1980-2000), and Millenials (born after 2000). It got me thinking about some distinctions I see in the way common technological tools are used between Gen X’ers like me (I was born in 1972) and the Gen Y and Millenials. Here are three common tools we Gen X’ers (and some boomers) use regularly that our kids and their friends would scoff at:

Old School:  Business Cards.

You are at a social function or business event and you strike up a conversation about widgets with Bob from Acme, Inc. You and Bob hit it off and realize you may be able to help each other or share valuable advice down the line. What do you do? You and Bob exchange business cards, of course. At least that is what you might do if you are over 30 years old.

New Generation: Social Media.

My little brothers may never have business cards. I stopped carrying them myself a couple years ago.

I met a gentleman a few weeks ago, who turned out to be a fellow vegan and avid book reader. We read a lot of the same material and enjoy much of the same food, so my new friend asked for my business card as he extended his. I asked him to hold his card while I snapped a picture of it with my phone. I explained I no longer use business cards and rather than collect and store them in a folder or wallet I will rarely look at, I instead snap pictures of the cards and upload them to my free Evernote account. When I need to recall a card or contact information, I open Evernote right my phone’s browser and search for the person’s name (or any text in the picture). Evernote pulls up the picture of the business card.

The gentleman (a little sheepishly) then asked for my card. I smiled and said, “My business card is Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MichaelSalamey.com, or you can just do a Google Search for me. Here, just put my Google Voice number in your contacts. Now you can find me anytime, follow me socially, text me, or give me a call whenever you need me. Who needs a business card?”

Applications like Evernote and Springpad will soon be replaced by Augmented Reality applications that offer even better, sleeker ways to network and interface with people. Soon your phone will use facial recognition to pull up any social media information you want about a person (or that they want you to have, anyway).

Old School:  Voicemail.

My cousin Abe trained me to stop leaving him voicemail about a year ago. I would call and leave a message and he would call back a few minutes later, asking if I had called. I would say, “Yes. I left a message.” He would patiently remind me that he never checks his messages. One day, just to illustrate his point, he called his voice mail on speaker phone. He had 43 messages. 43! They went back several months. “See?” he said, “Why do people even leave voicemails anyway? That’s what caller ID and text-messaging is for.”

I thought this was just Abe’s way of being eccentric, but my little brothers stopped checking their voicemail too. It is pointless to leave a message on their phone. Jody Thompson, Michael Barata, and I were discussing this very thing a few weeks ago over a game of pool. Jody pointed out many younger people do not even bother to set up voicemail on their phones.

New Generation: IM, SMS, and Google Voice.

Jody’s observation made me think of my little brothers and my cousin Abe. It turns out voicemail is going the way of the Atari 2600 for most young people. A friend noted he is annoyed when people leave voice messages. “Why not just IM me instead of making me log into my voicemail for each message, listen to the time/date stamp, and then someone’s boring rant before they just get to the point? Send a text—I know what you want immediately and I can probably respond in 140 characters or less.”

Texting and Instant Messaging is what the tech-savvy do. I’m glad to say I am a little ahead of the curve on this one. I use Google Voice (perhaps my all-time favorite application). One of its many wonderful features is “voice-to-text”. When someone leaves a voicemail, it appears on my phone as a text message. I can play the audio or respond via text, email, or instant message.

Old School:  Cell Phone.

My cousin Abe joked on my Facebook wall that he downloaded an application for his Blackberry that allowed him to use the device to send and receive telephone calls. I thought that was funny because like many power-users, I rarely use my cell phone as an actual phone. It is more like a portable computer and multi-media productivity and entertainment tool for me.

New Generation: Smart Phone.

The vast majority of time spent using my phone is to take advantage of its integrated social media capabilities, to browse the web, or to manage tasks and calendars. I spent less than 200 minutes of time actually “talking on the phone” over the last 2 months. Cell phones (and many home phones) have been replaced by “Smart Phones”—phones capable of doing much more than make and accept voice calls. None is more popular than the IPhone, of course, but I wonder how long the concept of a “phone” will be around.

Apple’s mega-popular IPad (which I suspect has forced Microsoft to reconsider its options) has already given a glimpse of a near future where the phone is as archaic as the Model T. With an ultra-thin high-resolution tablet PC and clever use of Bluetooth and applications like Google Voice, the phone as we know it, may soon be as irrelevant as… well… this.

(That’s nerd humor for you non-techies; you have to click on the word “this” to understand the last word of the last sentence).

Tags: 3 business tools, business cards, cell phone, cellphone, gen x, gen y, generation gap, Michael Salamey, new generation, old school, ROWE, social media, voicemail