This afternoon, I attended career day at my daughter, Josephine's, school.

Now, I've spoken all over the country in front of audiences large and small, but I'll tell you this: There are few more intimidating audiences than 40 or so fifth graders. That being said, I came prepared.

I started my session by trying to explain what Microsoft does. I held up a picture of BillG and asked the group if they knew who that was. Scattered hands went up and we eventually got that part right. Then I reached into my bag and pulled out my Master Chief helmet and asked if they knew who that was and, not surprisingly, they got it on the first try. "Sweet," I thought, "I've got them in the palm of my hand now."

And indeed it seemed that way for the next 10 minutes. I answered more questions about Xbox, Wii and Playstation than I thought there were in the known universe. I even gently explained why Microsoft won't be producing an Xbox for the Wii.

As I was preparing to wrap up the Q&A, I picked a young lady in the front row who looked me straight in the eye and asked:

Isn't Linux better than Windows?

Like an underpaid, under-appreciated vaudevillian actor, I actually did a double-take and said, "Excuse me?"

"It's just that I think Linux is better than Windows and I'm wondering why you think it isn't."

Needless to say, I was not exactly prepared for this. I mean, I discuss the merits of Linux and Windows all the time, just not with eleven-year-olds. I answered her question by saying I didn't necessarily think that Windows was better than Linux, but that they were both operating systems and each had specific strengths and weaknesses, and that it really depended on what you were looking to do. That seemed to satisfy her, but she concluded by saying, "I still like Linux better." I absolutely failed as an evangelist in this instance, but in all fairness, she did ambush me.

This really got me thinking about the younger generation and their ubiquitous connection with technology. We hear about this all the time. In fact, the one major argument I've had with my oldest daughter, Zoe, in the past few months has been whether she's old enough to have her own mySpace page ("But Daaaaaaad, all my friend have one!"). Both of my oldest daughters have cell phones and the idea that mobile phones used to be carried in bags and had batteries that lasted 20 minutes carries the same level of incredulity as when I showed them the video games I used to play on my Atari 2600. Even my six-year-old, Gwynneth, can play most Nintendo DS games far better than I can and even laughs at my eventual failure each time we play.

But this question was different. Here was an eleven-year-old child that already had a preferred operating system, and challenged me to explain the major advantages of one platform over another. She was alone in this group of kids, but a 1:40 ratio of kids with deep technical knowledge to kids who think software is just about video games is a pretty significant part of the American population and worth noting.

As kids become more discontented with just experiencing technology, they are going to start looking for ways they can become a participant in it, and this is going to lead them to start exploring platforms and the tools available to develop software for these platforms. Because they will have had so much exposure to technology growing up and the ability to learn and build new software will be so available to them, they will have no fear as they approach new problems that require innovative, creative solutions.

There is a post I've been working on for some time now, inspired by Zain Naboulsi, about Second Life and the impact it can have on interpersonal relationships. The holdup in finishing and publishing that post has been that I needed to get deeper into that experience to prove out some theories I had about it. What I've found is fascinating.

When letting my kids ride "shotgun" with me in Second Life, they seem to form connections with the other avatars I interact with in the virtual world. One example that comes to mind is when I walked away from someone I was conversing with in the middle of their sentence. My kids actually admonished me for being "rude" to the other "person." This, I think, shows the connection that our children have with technology that perhaps we, as adults, do not. I see a screen where my momentary rudeness to another virtual being is not even worth noticing. But, to my kids, that was equivalent to turning around and walking away from someone I was speaking to in "meatspace," and that, therefore, is rude.

This is the thing we need to really understand about this younger generation. The lines between personal and virtual relationships are going to melt away. I want to believe that machines will never replace real, interactive human contact, but that may be because that is the the world I've grown in. My children live in a world where they can befriend digital representations of real people half-way around the world and it is as real as if they lived next door. The text messages that they send and receive can carry as much value as a personal conversation over coffee does to us "older folk." And a mySpace page can be the difference between social success and failure.

So here's what I learned at school today: Don't underestimate kids and their depth of understand when it comes to technology. They are living in it now and will drive the direction it takes in the future.