My dad is 83 and recently bought himself a new laptop and set it up himself. He’s got a smartphone while I still have a stupidphone. He bought a GPS for his car. Basically, he’s an old guy who still manages to deal with new technology when he sees a use for it. That is a key thing - he doesn’t keep up with everything, but picks and chooses what would be useful for him.
Age alone doesn’t determine who keeps up with tech and who doesn’t, but dad doesn’t buy into the “too old to learn new stuff” meme. I’ve known all too many people who simply decide at age X they can no longer do Y. I feel sorry for those people.
Today one of my co-workers said that another co-worker claimed I was around when fossils were forming.
I responded “Yup, I pushed them into the mud”.
“What did you do without fire, since it hadn’t been invented yet?”
“There were plenty of volcanos and meteors in those days.”
(I’m 49 in a company of 20-25 year olds. I’ve been working with computers longer than most of them have been alive.)
In her late 80s, my mother had signed up for a one-hour “Learn to Use a Computer” class for seniors. They learned how to use the mouse, how to open and save, and how to send and receive e-mail. That’s all.
My mother’s reaction to the class: “I never realized that working on a computer could be so complicated!!!”
I’ve pretty much hit that wall. The thing is, I’ve learned new things constantly, only to see all my effort wasted. What good is it to know how to change a directory now, for instance? I only used that knowledge for a few years, now I have to learn something new. It would be different if these were FUN things to learn, but they aren’t. They’re boring things to memorize.
I have to admit that I thought that I’d hate an ereader, but my daughter got me one a year ago and I love it. My biggest problem with it is that it’s just TOO easy to shop for books on it. My nook lives in my purse or in the bedroom drawer, depending on where I am.
That’s about what I do. I like technology just fine; I just don’t feel the need to live on the bleeding edge of it.
My peeve with people my age (I’m 45, too), is the constant moaning about, “All the new music is crap. There hasn’t been anything good recorded since 1979.” To which I say a resounding, “BULLSHIT!” There is TONS of good music around these days; you just aren’t likely to hear it on the radio.
I was going to submit a post, but fuck it. The kindle fire browser is too crappy for editing a post. I’ll go grab a stick and post later from a real keyboard.
I actually have a pretty tech-savvy family. My grandparents are in their 80’s, but they both regularly use computers, and while they sometimes need my help, they’re remarkably self-sufficient. My mom does quite well, and I wasn’t sure how she’d do when I gave her my old Android phone, but she picked it up almost instantly and loves it now. My dad got a late start, but now you can hardly find him watching TV without a laptop; most likely using eBay to order auto parts.
There is one thing, though, that prevents all of them from progressing even faster than they do, and that is a fear of exploration. Some people say I have a knack at picking up tech stuff, but really my biggest quality is that when I pick something up, I press all the buttons and turn all the knobs (metaphorically or not). I explore as deeply as I can, if for no other reason than I like to see how things work.
Once you’ve done this enough times, the pattern behind how interfaces work becomes obvious, and so when something novel comes around, it turns out it’s just a variation on something I’ve seen before.
I’m sure some of this can be written off by people simply being uninterested in learning the intricacies of things. I can respect this to some extent. But more of the time it’s obvious that the person fears doing something wrong and making it worse. Maybe this is is a reasonable fear for something like a car, but for a computer or tablet or smartphone or whatever, it’s essentially impossible to break it by clicking the wrong thing. Most people don’t understand or accept this, and they limit themselves because of it.
For certain things, I reached this point long ago, my mantra being “Sometimes the best tool for the job is a checkbook.” Two years ago, we decided to replace the ancient windows in our house with nice new ones. We could have done it ourselves - we have lots of tools and lots of experience in home repairs and remodeling. But what we didn’t have was time to do it all at once. We might have been able to replace a window or two a day, and since we worked plus allowing for weather, it could have taken 2 months or more to replace them all. Instead, we called a contractor, and they were done in a day. All I had to do was take down the curtains. We got what we wanted and did our part to stimulate the economy a little.
Same when we hired a couple of sisters who were just starting out with a house cleaning business. I know how to clean, and I think I did a better job than they did most of the time. But I really hate doing it and they were young entrepreneurs…
That’s how I look at it now - stimulating the economy.
This. And how can you get old and decide you don’t have to learn anything new? The sheer arrogance in that statement, not to mention that yes, if you stop learning things new, you eventually forget how to learn new things!
That doesn’t mean I need to jump first on every technology that comes out. But if something is useful to me, you bet your ass I’m on it.
As to the Kindle, I find I’m getting more and more away from books. I mean, at this moment I have 110 books on that damn thing. I got another $50 in Kindle gift cards over Christmas. I can carry it around in one hand. It’s rapidly winning out over books just for ease of portability.
I look at them as “Ooh, SHINY!” Kind of like the way I’d go nuts over a new toy when I was kid. I never played much with toys as a kid, though.
Exactly :nodding: It’s the reason why I won’t invest in a smartphone – why bother if it’s going to change completely within the next year or two? I think tablets are cool, but that doesn’t mean I actually want to own one.
Also, as FCM said upthread, I refuse to be tethered to a piece of technology. Sure it’s handy in many instances, but I don’t want to become addicted to it and lose all sense of what life was like before the internet.
When I was a kid there was a huge pasture nearby with wild apple trees. Late summer would find all the kids in the hood sporting bruises from the apple fights (yep, when baseball season was over we threw apples at each other–hard). The technological leap in those days was in fact the apple stick. You jam your apple on the end of the stick and the leverage would let you launch that sucker at speeds approaching mach1.
Sticks are better than tech for another reason. They help keep the kids off your gawdam lawn!
I’m 64 and do okay with the technology that I feel is useful to me (other than my current kerfuffle with my Seagate drive going on over in GQ). I have a 3G Kindle, and a laptop and notebook connected to a router, and use a pro-grade DSLR. Since I’m retired, I have zero need for an iPhone or Blackberry and the associated service charges, and still prefer maps to GPS. I can still hook up a fairly complex sound system. But I can certainly see where technology is slowing pulling away from me, particularly when I see items for sale and have no idea what they are used for. But then I really have no need to know what they’re for. So I don’t have a stick, but sometimes I think about buying one; especially the new 5G.
This is also off the topic, but I get so sick of how my mother, who has a vision disability, is treated because she doesn’t have a computer. She can’t use one! She can’t see!* Yet all this stuff she does wants her email address, and she gets a big eyeroll from people when she says she doesn’t have an email account. For the unavoidable situations where they require one, she uses mine.
Anyway, she may be 70 but she ain’t folding her hands and refusing to utilize technology. She’s all the time asking us if so-and-so has been on Facebook lately and what they’ve said.
*Yes, we are aware of accessibility equipment available.
I’m pushing 50, have a smart phone, laptop, Roku, etc.
Don’t have trouble keeping up with technology.
But have never understood texting. Even why it exists. Maybe before portable email it had its place but I cannot think of a single use case for it now. I know there are millions of people out there pounding away on tiny keyboards with their thumbs, but I have no idea why. If it is important enough to communicate then send an email. If it isn’t then don’t waste people’s time.
I’m 66, and I’m like a lot of others in this thread: If it’s important to me, I’ll figure it out. I might be missing out on a lot of cool stuff, but you don’t miss what you never had.
I can set up a PC, printer, and speakers and download/install programs. I can do basic troubleshooting. I can hook up the DVD player to the TV. I can use all the basic functions and the tools on my cell phone. I can tell the Garmin where I want to go. I can download photos.
