A tweet by Paul Graham opened up a window into adult-teenager conversations.

Let me reproduce it here because he puts it eloquently:

Parenting trick: When your kids reach the sullen teen stage where they don't want to talk to you, drive them places. In the car they forget they're having a conversation. It helps that you're both looking forward instead of at each other.

Simple enough?

Adults struggle to establish contact in those growing years. It's as if the kid you know well morphs into someone distant.

Conversations become awkward. The easygoing banter dries up.

One of the worst things you can do as an adult is to announce "Let's sit down and  talk"

It implies that you are going to tell him or her something they don't want to hear or already know.

And the accusation "You don't talk to me anymore" doesn't work either.

Further down in the replies, someone said " Walks work just as well"

That's when I went back to childhood - and evening walks with Dad.

He would tell me things that shaped his life and then, I would open up.

Face to face is overrated. Side by side works better for conversations between generations.

Do you like the way you look on video calls?

It's the most unflattering angle.

The camera at the top of the laptop screen is level with your chin. And the placement makes you look dorky

Mobile phone cameras are flexible and have a better resolution but holding the camera steady is an exercise in futility.

Your image wobbles and goes into all kinds of light and dark variations and the room seems to spin if you move around during a call.

Various solutions have been proposed - from how you need to frame yourself, how high the chair should be, where the lights should be placed and of course, the all-pervasive rim lighting to avoid shadows on your features.

Seth Godin's Zoom call setup looks as complex as implementing a global marketing campaign. 

But an Indiegogo project has come up with a surprisingly simple idea - the Centre Cam

It hangs from a clamp in the middle of your laptop screen and instantly, you look human again.

As if you were sitting in a chair and not suspended from the ceiling.

The inventor asked for $10000 dollars for the project. He went past the target a long time ago.

The right solution to a problem is a customer magnet.

P2P - the way to live life?

Peer has two shades of meaning.

One is to look carefully

The other indicates people of the same age or social standing.

The internet has given it a third dimension.

For a while, it was the best way to share digital files. Give while you take.

P2P enabled downloads of the latest movies and music before streaming became the established norm. Part of the attraction was that it was illegal and therefore rebellious.

For those familiar with Napster, this was the Wild West age of the internet.

Peer 2 Peer in human relationships is quite relatable. It's also about give and take and the connections people make.

Now think for a moment, how many of your friends are the same age group as you are? 80-90%?

Can you think of friends who are at least 20 years older than you?

Or are they completely out of your orbit?

Now assuming you are in your 30s, can you think of friends who are much younger?

Not many?

And yet, it's one of the easiest ways to build in-depth knowledge from people who are a generation older.

And the younger ones to tell you what's changing.

P2P works even across generation gaps.

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