I love old people.
With a sense of achievement they tell you they called and left a message on your VHS player. And of course they still get frustrated when they think the phones engaged because we're on the internet.
But what's even better than old people that fumble with technology is middle-aged adults who just straight up suck.
Working in the technology industry I've seen plenty of mind-benders.
These people make browsing the internet look as complicated as diffusing a bomb.
These peoples fingers have only just developed enough speed and strength to double click in the last few years.
These are the type of people that leave a faceprint on your digi cam because they're still trying to look through the viewfinder. You know the ones.
Anyway, when I see these people floundering I can't help but think "Will I be like this one day?"
I wonder if the technology of the future will render me helpless?
I started to think..
At some stage for these middle agers, the world was manageable. Letters, Newspapers, Telephones, Wristwatches, Telegrams. It was a world they understood and it was a world that to a certain degree worked.
But it changed, and it changed fast. eMail, RSS feeds, internet, smartphones, bluetooth, skype, megapixels.
There were two types of people,
- The people who chose to learn and make the effort to keep up
- The people who thought, the way I do things works why would I change? I don't need email anyway.
Almost without fail, it's the people who decided that they didn't need to change that are the ones struggling now when they realise that change gets to a point where it becomes non-optional.
I came to this conclusion.
As long as I continue to be open to new ways of doing things, not bagging new ideas and technology, but instead giving everything a go, then hopefully I'll stay ahead of the wave.
Twitter is a great example, if I'd followed my gut feeling I would have dismissed it as a pointless, useless technology. One that I could live without.
But against those feelings I got involved, and now it's something that I use all the time.(Follow me it will do wonders for my selfesteem www.twitter.com/jiwanrai)
What will come next? After facebook, after twitter, after tumblr, and what will your response be?
- Choose to learn and keep up? or
- Not bother with them, The way I do things works for me...
the night before last i stayed in a hotel room that had a Beta VHS player.
ReplyDeleteThats Gold. Did you have to light a furnace to heat the water?
ReplyDeleteI remember when we started our job as YPT. We got handed some documents on floppy disk.
G-tang, This is the only reason why I joined Twitter! As you know, this was in response to a conversation I had with a teengager. I said:
ReplyDelete'How did you do that file conversion thing?'
He said 'Zamzar'
I said 'What?'
He showed me.
I said 'woah woah, slow down'
He said 'oh Matt, you're so OLD'
It hurt.
I joined Twitter.
I am now young again.
Your definition of middle aged must be very old!
ReplyDeleteTo me technology can be looked at two ways:
1. What have we gained
2. What have we lost.
In many ways we have lost many things through the prevading nature of some technology.
We are never out of touch but we never get time to relax, we never write a good letter (I still have one my wife wrote me 20+ years ago that told me all about her whole week in detail!) and historians will struggle to find diaries in the future.
With modern technology we are often distracted but less likely to be happy. Bangladesh is reported to have the third highest happiness rating in the world but New Zealand, Australia, the United States and other so-called first world and technology advanced countries are all at the bottom.
Ultimately, we have less time to think about God because we are so busy!
The advances of Technology have also bought many benefits and will continue to do so. We should not hide from them, we should be willing to grow and learn but most of all we should be willing to test what value they truly bring us.
The scary thing is that some of those people that reject or don't understand modern technology are also very good at caring for or relating to people. They are the sales people, the lecturers, the nurses, the pastors, the counsellors, the doctors, the teachers, the friends, the mothers and fathers we rely on so much.
Hey Paul,
ReplyDeleteIts so good to have you give a different view point! Yes I agree, technology has given us so much but at the same time is the catalyst for our over-busyness, and most probably the underlying reason for a lot of emotional disconnection.
I guess like with anything, its a balance. Go too far one way and you inevitably lose out somewhere else.
Stay up to date, it's possibly at the expense of living a simple and unhurried life.
Take the focus off, it's possible you're at risk of losing touch with a changing world.
You make a significant point though, no matter where technology takes us, it will never be able to replace the power and significance of plain old face-to-face, caring, heart felt interaction, or put simply - spending time with each other. Worth thinking about....