Figuring out personal age-appropriate technology behavior is confusing today and will become more complicated in a future workplace that smashes together at least five distinct generations of employees -- from the Silent Generation, born in the Depression years before World War II, through the postwar baby boomers, their Generation X and millennial (or Generation Y) successors to Generation We, now mostly in elementary school.

One thing that's certain about this workplace of the near future: You will no longer be able to go by the general rule that the oldest guy in the joint is the person in charge -- or the least knowledgeable about technology.