Plus (and of course I should have known this) he won't remember a time before email existed. For him, the Internet has always been a constant force in the galaxy, uniting us, binding us, surrounding us...
Sorry, went a bit Yoda there. It is a point though - there was a time when it was much more difficult to get in touch with people. I know I've written about this before, but technology has driven the connections between us for hundreds of years - from pigeon-post to Periscope, from telegrams to Twitter. A lot of invention has gone into helping us meet, talk and share together, wherever and whomever we are.
All of us have grown up with some of those inventions, and all of us have seen more things invented and adopted to make the whole thing easier, faster... just better, I suppose.
It makes me wonder what's next. Clearly phones aren't really phones any more and for years now, the personal assistant, the iPod, the sat nav, the home computer and the telephone have all been converging around the Internet into a single device that does everything, knows everything, helps with just about anything you can ask it.
Perhaps that convergence will continue? Like lines reaching a vanishing point... maybe there'll come a day when all the systems in our houses and cars and offices are controlled online by some wearable device? Maybe that device will eventually end up being embedded under the skin, controlled by the mind, and will actually become part of us - like a sort of cybernetic passport...
It doesn't take long before this train of thought steams into a scary tunnel, does it?
'It's because you're connected to the wrong Exchange server,' said the IT Student, happily. 'I can soon sort that out.'
I chuckled to myself, still imagining Yoda racing round the office with piles of hand-written notes for the Jedi.
'Sort it, you can?' I said without thinking.
He looked at me weirdly. I could hardly blame him.
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