People still send letters – but they send even more e-mail; I strongly believe that skills of “word processing” and the “formal letter” will further decline, and that the employees of the future will at school no longer be taught the difference between “Yours sincerely” and “Yours faithfully”, but instead the difference between “Reply” and “Reply All”.

This also marks the decline of software founded upon such principles of formality and control – a friend at a technical establishment sent me:

it’s funny here, they implemented sharepoint using some expensive consultancy
and everyone kept using twiki
so they upgraded to freewiki
and we are all happy bunnies
well more or less

…and albeit that this is an technology employer (with ~200 employees) they’re running into the fact that employees just want to get their work done using the metaphors to which they’re accustomed.

Which means Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wiki and Blogs. And whatever comes next.

So I’ll repeat what is becoming increasingly evident: if companies switch now to working in the ways that upcoming employees actually like using, they will have a competitive edge when then upcoming generation takes employment with them.