The Multi-Million Dollar Learning Curve

Today I had the thrill of teaching Facebook to a serial entrepreneur and multi-millionaire, and it was one of the funniest experiences of my entire life. Why was it so funny? With somebody whose accolades range from starting help trigger a cultural revolution to accomplishing the fastest IPO in history to building a billion dollar business, you'd think pretty much anything came naturally to a person like this - but absolutely not.

How could something as simple as sending a message to a friend be such a difficult concept? Sharing a link - what the heck is that? Somebody tagged me in a video so they could gain more recognition and traffic, even though I wasn't even in the video, what an asshole! Who the heck put these pictures of me up online - I didn't approve this! Tagging - is that an illegal act? Who are these "wall" comments directed to? Why are these people talking about me?

Its important to remember that the little things younger generations take for granted don't come second nature to everybody. While "those social network things" aren't anything new, there's still a giant technology gap between younger and older generations even in today's high speed digital era. Are we nearing a point in the not-too-distant future where technology evolves quicker than mainstream society's ability to adapt these changes? Will human aptitude to receive, process, adopt and perfect technology limit the speed of future progress?

With technological innovation evolving at light speed, specifically in regards to the internet, have we ever seen such a large gap in common knowledge? Probably not. Has there ever been such an important society-influencing technological innovation that was so easily adopted by a younger generation and relatively disregarded by an older generation?