Newhouse A1

"Dan Katz is a 36-year-old lawyer, congressional aide and father. He also is a member of a growing global community known as 'the thumb generation.'

At his desk in the Hart Senate Office building, at his home in suburban Washington, at the mall with his wife and 11-month-old child, Katz is all thumbs as he tap-tap-taps away at his BlackBerry handheld e-mail device.

'I've gotten pretty good at it,' Katz said of his superior thumb typing skills. 'When I get my thumbs flying, I can get a message out in less than a minute, easily,' said the chief counsel to Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J."