Marc Fisher's piece "In Cyberspace, Everyone Can Hear You Scream" has some good observations about generation differences in communications styles. The report show the need for mutual efforts to bridge "the gulfs that separate digital kids from analog parents and new concepts of community from old notions of responsibility".

Fisher starts with an incident in Fairfax County, VA where high school senior Devraj Kori telephoned a county schools administrator's home to ask why the schools weren't closed during previous week's light snowfall. The administrator's wife, Candy Tistadt, returned Kori's call and left a message that called the students her husband serves "snotty-nosed little brats" and told Kori to "Get over it, kid, and go to school!" Mrs. Tistadt's sarcastic voice message was posted on YouTube. [See Note below] Quite a mess.

"We are the cellphone generation.... We are used to being reached at all times."
- Devraj Kori

"We all have a breaking point, but you can't break anymore without the rest of the world knowing about it.
-Julie Good"

As Marc Fisher noted in his piece nobody in the incident seems to think he or she is wrong; there are no good guys here. There is collision in the differing expectations of being "reachable" and of having privacy at home.

One Washington Post readers commented, Who has a home phone anymore?", a question with an obvious answer "nobody" for the "digital natives". It reflects the move toward telephones as devices to connect people, not locations. Along with the people connection, there is a growing expectation of being able to reach somebody and get a response immediately. The acceptance of ringing up somebody, getting no answer and trying later is disappearing.

I have a prediction, within a decade or less, some court or another will decided consider that not having a mobile communications device and being always reachable to be a lack of due diligence. The rationale will be that, by choosing not to avail oneself of a mobile and keeping it on, one has chosen to be incommunicado for important calls. E.g.; a parent not being able to receive a call from the school seeking consent for medical treatment for the parent's injured child.

While there are many people with this expectation of everybody being reachable, there are also many holding a more traditional view of having some distance. Mrs. Tistadt's voice message reflects that notion that one, especially a student, does not call a school administrator's home. Many people still prefer to be called at their workplace for matters concerning their job and reserve the home contact points for family, friends, and household matters. Breaching that boundary can be seen as a serious invasion of privacy. (Yes, I know, some would retort, "Get over it and go with the flow!")

Still, we a going to have a lot more of the technology culture variations in the future. Our lives will span many changes in technologies and cultural approaches to them. Today's digital natives are at the risk of "not getting it" a couple of decades from now. The blogs, IM, Facebook, MySpace, and that that will become old eventually and new things will come along. Personally, I find this diversity fascinating, but the tough part is to work out the frictions in communications.

Marc Fisher includes some advice to teachers from Julie Good, who runs a program at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, MD that trains students interested in being teachers. She agrees that the boundaries are shifting but notes that teachers who adapt with their students will usually be rewarded with civil and appropriate behaviour. This doesn't mean YouTube'ing videos of your student's awkward moments or such. She recommends giving students several options for contacting the teacher:

"I give my kids my cellphone, my office phone, my home phone, my three e-mails and my Facebook," she says. "This is a 24-7 job, and I've never had a problem with kids abusing it." As for the YouTube posting in the Fairfax case, "Hey, it's called freedom of speech," Good says, reminding me that "at this age, impulse control hasn't kicked in fully."

This is good advice. Provide acceptable means of communications in advance. There are other professions for which this is good advice.

Oh, yes. another word of advice: If you leave a voicemail message, remember you are being recorded -- that's the idea of voicemail -- and that recording can copied to other media.

J.D. Abolins

Note: There are now several version of the video, each with a different set of graphics. I was debating whether or not to link to one of these videos.The purpose of my posting on this topic is not take sides in the incident but to draw some lessons for all of us. So I am posting the link only to provide background information about the incident.

UPDATED 9 February 2008 to correct several typos I noticed after seeing this posting referenced and quoted by an E-Commerce Times article.