I’ve always been on the forefront of new technology until very recently. I had a laptop when they were expensive and crappy, I had lots of new toys and gadgets, and I always kept up with the literature.
Recently though, I feel like things are moving too fast. Texting in particular is a mystery to me. I type 70wpm up to 90, and I am completely flabbergasted why someone would want to type something out on a keyboard the same size as their hand using their thumbs.
I also don’t understand cell phones that do 10,000 things (nowadays, I guess the number is unlimited with apps.) The reason to have a cell phone is when your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, your house is on fire and you need to call the police. If you run down the battery playing Tetris, what’s the point of having the cell phone in the first place? I leave it closed, charged, and play games on my computers.
I also don’t understand MP3 players (which are integrated with phones nowadays, I suppose.) Why would anyone need to carry around their entire music collection 24 hours a day? If you have 200 songs and each song was about 5 minutes long, it would take 1000 minutes, or around 15 hours to play. Also, why do you need all your songs if you just put a handful on repeat?
I’m wondering if it was just me or maybe I need to get with the times.
Wanna come sit out on my front porch with me, drink cheap beer, and yell at the kids to get off my lawn? Cause I know exactly how you feel. Not so much about feeling old about the latest tech, but for much of this stuff to me its often whats the point or how is that BETTER that what came previously?
Texting is great for a quick or silent way to communicate. I was able to use my iPhone to carry me through large portions of the country that don’t have a radio stations on my last 2100 miles drive and rather then finding a station to listen to while I drifted to sleep I could play my music.
I also use my phone to surf the internet to add to conversations or win arguments. From my recent trips I was in Boise and we were discussing the relative merits between Boise and my home town since Boise felt much more metropolitan I was able to find that it only had about twice the population of my hometown but about 20 times the development. We were able to then compare this to other cities and try and figure out why my hometown is so backwards.
To add to the opp I don’t get the constant need to update the world on my activities, twitter or obsessive Facebooking. I don’t do enough important things to update people more then once a month by phone and if I don’t know you that well then every 6 months or so on Facebook. I just don’t know anyone that I care enough about ti want to know what they had for breakfast or that I want to tell what I had.
Hell, I felt this way back in the late 70s when there were so many advances in stereos that it seemed by the time the latest type was in your store, it was already obsolete because the newest one not yet there was “more advanced” than the one in stock.
It seems to me that a lot of the new technology is useless. Texting? Hell, isn’t it easier to phone and actually talk to someone? Seems a step down to write them notes to read, no matter how it is they get them.
Some things are kind of mind-boggling, for example mp3s and digital music files, and the idea that I could likely put every Beatles album on one small memory stick and take it with me to play in the car. It doesn’t seem all that long ago, really, that I was buying a cassette deck for the car…
I think part of the reason it feels like technology is moving too fast is that etiquette hasn’t kept up with it.
No one has defined new social rules so it’s a free for all.
People use the new technology, as an excuse to be lazy or rude or at least I think they do.
But young people don’t see it that way. They like to multitask.
For example I had 13 job interviews last month (June) in all but one, the interviewer stopped interviewing me and answered and took cell phone calls. Now maybe I just suck so much that the interviewer doesn’t care. But to me that’s rude.
Obviously it isn’t considered that anymore. Again, it could just be me, that the interviewer feels that I’m not going to be a serious candidate so they don’t care.
Having 1,000 songs on your mp3 player means you don’t have to plan. I’ve notice young people don’t plan. They will say “I’ll call you and if you’re free great.”
Cell phones keep people on short leashes. Is it really necessary for a guy on the bus to have to verify how close he’s getting to his girlfriends house five times in a 10 minute trip?
Why can’t people make a list for things they need at a grocer instead of just calling their kid at home and having them look while they shop?
And I feel old complaining about things I consider just plain rude. But I do realize I am in the vast minority here. Times change and you change with them or sound like YOUR mother and father
Yes. Brick-and-mortar computer stores have had the same problem with computer gear for at least the last decade and a half, excepting the new “manufacturer-specific” stores.
There’s a problem with technology change that I don’t think the young appreciate. If you use technology tools to create a solution to some problem, the problem returns every time the tools get too obsolete to keep them running.
You know how, on a graph, there are generally some nice round numbers along each axis? Maybe three or ten or so of them, regular intervals, spanning a bit wider than the data, ending in even numbers or in 0’s and 5’s, or otherwise just tidy? I wrote a bit of program in the late 70’s to generate such lists of numbers, on ROM BASIC on a CPM machine. I have had to do the job over every few years since then, most recently just a year or so ago. The trouble is that there are NO programming environments that I can count on lasting as long as I want the problem to stay fixed.
The young see that a new version is coming out soon, and it will be better, and think that’s good. Trouble is, the new version will melt, and the one after it will melt, and so forth.
I have a monkey wrench on my desk that is about 100 years old, and it still works. Everything doesn’t have to keep getting better. Roads still work basically the same way they did 100 years ago, and look how useful they are. Glass is still pretty much glass in most cases, after thousands of years. Why can’t some programming means stand the fuck still for long enough to forget about recomprehending some messy little algorithm? Not that ROM BASIC was so great, but the little lists of graphing numbers it spat out were as good as any other!
Yes and no. I can keep up with it, I just find I’m less interested in learning about new things, and am comfortable with what works for me at the time. I have no urge to go get the newest thing, and tend to move at a glacier’s pace when picking up something newfangled. (For example, e-readers; I’ll be in my grave before they make a battery with enough power to backlight for as long as I want. And I’m ok with not getting into that until it’s just exactly what I want)
I’m fine with all of that, except as regarding cars. I prefer older vehicles for my ability to do basic maintenance on them, plus they contain metal. Metal is good when something’s hitting me. Newer cars that I either can’t maintain or can’t figure out HOW to maintain irritate the frack out of me. I’d be the same way if I had a billion bucks; it’s my machine, it’s my baby, I want to know and FEEL when something’s wrong, not be told by an idiot light or a test on a machine.
So, I guess that means I’m already old and grumpy, and new stuff just brings that out more in me.
The day I need serious help upgrading/updating/rebuilding my own computer is when I’ll feel old. At which point I’ll find a bunch of 5 inch floppies and go play frisbee.
I hate that Microsoft has to take everything they make and completely rejigger it every two to four years and make your knowledge irrelevant.
I have a log server. It receives every log message from our firewalls, authentication servers, email servers, intrusion detection servers, pretty much everything important. I use grep, sort, uniq, and awk to query everything I need. Those commands work nearly the same way they did in the early 1970’s.
Microsoft IIS7 is Very different from IIS6, which is very different than IIS5
Texting is cheaper, also you can look back to check what was said. I’ve been texting my 72 year old mother the world cup scores, she’s sailing in the med, but they’re all still betting on the games.
I love new technology, but don’t buy into it unless I have a reason to. I have a reason to own an iPod, but no reason to own a phone that’s anything other than a phone. And other things make me feel old, not this.
MP3 players are great at the gym, or doctors surgery or whatever.
I love new technology but I believe some of it is just a shade too obtuse (Who cares what size camera is in a phone?). I do need to sort out the Sat Nav I got for Christmas though.
The key is to be selective: you don’t have to use every single new technology or service. Personally I don’t care much for Twitter or Facebook. However I really like accessing the web and listening to podcasts on my phone. Google Maps with GPS is also very useful as also having a camera which I sometimes use as a makeshift scanner. Smartphones are so versatile there is bound to be something that you find useful.
Well, the benefit of a portable music player with no moving parts should be obvious(when compared to tape and cd-players), once you have that, storage space is just a cost/convenience issue. When storage is cheap enough for you to fit your entire music collection on your mp3 player, why not do it?
MP3 players beat boom boxes. If someone of limited mental capacity has to have their music blaring in their ears 24/7, at least the rest of us don’t have to listen to it.
heh
For a second, I read this is music barfing in their ears.
I am of the “yes and no” opinion. I love mp3 players.
I agree with Markxxx that etiquette does not seem to be keeping up with tech advances. If that puts me in the ‘get off my lawn’ segment of society, so be it.
I can’t keep up with the latest gadget, but as panache says, I don’t buy something unless I really need it.
Oh if this were only true. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve had to put headphones on to block out the music coming out of someones ears.
I’m in the yes and no camp. For years I complained that I just wanted a phone it make phone calls. Then I worked for a few years at a company where everyone had a blackberry. It’s amazing how small and efficient meetings can be if you don’t have to invite the entire team “just in case”. Instead if something comes up you send a quick text and have the answer by the end of the next item.
When I started the new job with the commute from hell hubby bought me an iPad. I moaned a bit about the cost but now instead of carting books back and forth I read e-books on this and as a bonus I can read the Dope on my way to and from the office.
Still not a fan of sharing every thought in my head on Twitter though.
No, I don’t use a lot of it but I can figure it out when I want to. I do text with certain people quite a lot–it’s like IM on the go and very handy for contacting certain friends that are hard to get hold of.
I don’t have an iPhone/iPad or anything, 'cause I’m cheap and don’t like Macs. But I’m hoping that the Notion Ink Adam will turn out to be something like what I want. The Nook beckons to me but doesn’t quite do it.
I’m only 35, so I haven’t fallen behind. I don’t text much, but can see the attraction. A text lets you send someone a message without having to have a conversation with them. I have a few friends who talk a lot so this saves time.
I love my Kindle, I haven’t read a paper book in months. I love going on vacation with 20 books only taking up the space of a thin paperback.
