I’m visiting my hometown Lund for some x-mas pregame activities.  This afternoon I was visiting a friend and found myself peeking into the room of Felix, her 14-year-old son. He was sitting in front of his computer in the dark, headphones covering one ear. He was playing World of Warcraft, working simultaneously with several characters, which he will later sell on e-bay for $300-$400 a piece. He was also IM-ing (with Skype) with someone and watching an episode of Scrubs in a very small window on his monitor.

Felix has grown up with the Internet and as far as he’s concerned it’s ubiquitous. The Internet he knows, is imbued with communication. There are few activities that aren’t shared or social. His spatial awareness and multitasking ability is awesome.

What I’m curious to find out is how my son, Loe (almost three), will interact with the world. I already see some very interesting behaviors, that I think he’ll share with many others in his generation. He’s of course colored by the fact that his father is a gadget freak, as I was by mine being an early adopter working in a scientific field.

The first time he held an iPod Touch, he was a couple of months shy of two. He picked it up, and it lit up. His finger quickly gravitated to the unlock arrow and when he touched it, it moved a little. He got the message and pressed down again and swiped it across the screen. To his delight, the screen filled with colorful icons. This is of course also an example of excellent interaction design on Apples part.

He now regularly picks up my iPhone, unlocks it, opens the YouTube app and flips to bookmarks, to watch one of the short clips of Höjdarna that he enjoys immensely. In the car the other day, it was taking some time for the clip to start rolling, we’re were out of 3g coverage. ”It’s loading, but it starts soon” he voluntered, upon seing the spinning circle and then patiently waited for at least two minutes until it started. Man, was I proud.

When he picks up a camera, he instantly knows how to turn it on and how to take pictures. When I got my new unibody MBP, he instantly noticed and commented on the fact that I had a new computer. He often requests to video-chat over Skype with his godfather and his grandma (and sometimes random people I’ve never heard of). Talking on the mobile is old news, he often instructs me to text people.

To Loe, everything is time-shifted. He’s hardly watched any regular programming at all. After an episode of this years x-mas calendar on Swedish public service broadcasting, he had a very hard time understanding that he couldn’t watch it again, or watch more of it right away, it just wouldn’t compute. If he’s watching something, and I ask him to pause it to do something else, he makes no fuss of this because he knows how pause works, and that it will be there waiting for him when he comes back. He fell instantly in love with Wall-e, a figure as natural to him as a cuddly pet.

Time-shifting is going to be defining for the next generation. They will never consume media on other terms than their own. There will be no broadcasting, only streaming. Live will mean accessing content as it is being made available. They’re unlikely to accept commercial breaks, but will surely be completely enveloped by product placement.

When Loe grows up, everything will be online. The notion of offline, unwired, will be completely foreign. He’ll certainly exist in an Internet of Things.

To me, there wasn’t always mobile phones, and there wasn’t always Internet. To Felix they’ve always been there, but he has still experienced the advent of the social revolution, especially with gaming. Facebook and  YouTube are sort of new even to him, as well as time-shifting. Try as I might, I can’t really imagine the things that Loe will consider as novel or new.

I keep wondering – what will awe the next generation?