the generation gap revisited

Today (well, technically yesterday, its 1:30 am right now), was the day I realized that my generation is the last one to have used - a typewriter, a pager(actually the only generation), a floppy disk, the VCR (again the only generation), and a two-stroke bike (add others if you can think of any). Makes you wonder, as technology grows at such pace, how many of these innovations will really be consistent, rather than being transient, like the pager.
Case in point - the VCR. Its really an incremental way to record and disseminate information. It was the logical step from the tape recorder, for aural information. The analog technology to capture audio/video on magnetic tape was considered revolutionary. and yet, in barely 30 years, the digital disc technology has completely annihilated any market share of tape.
The question is - should the credit go to digital CD technology for being so huge, so disruptive that it finished the VCR (and the boombox)? Or was the VCR simply a transient innovation that was given more than its due when it came out? These are questions that might not be answered for the next 100 years, when hopefully mankind will be able to figure out the perfect A.V. storage technology.

Anyhoo, coming back to the generation gap, I remember a conversation that I had with one of my managers at Kanbay, Sudeep Nadkarni (he's 5 yrs older than me). I consider him (along with Kartik, my other manager at Kanbay) as my mentor, and the point he made was pertinent - 'In these times, the generation gap is no longer the time it takes between generations, (i.e., around 20 years). Its more the information gap between individuals with a difference of not more than 5 years. The world is changing ever so fast, that I (Sudeep) consider myself to be a different generation from you (Subbu), as you would be in a different generation from the fresh engineer who joins Kanbay. '
Indeed, how true...see if you can find one common point of interest in the conversation with any occupant in one of the cafes in Bhandarkar Rd (Pune), Brigade Rd (Bangalore), Kamla Ngr Mkt (N Delhi), Damen (Chicago) or Williamsburg (Brooklyn). BTW, these are the places where the young 'uns congregate.