It must be my age.
There are people I know from my information professional days who are completely au fait with just about all aspects of modern technology, especially those dealing with communications and social media. They’re great! They utilise what is available and make the most out of things. They don’t seem to fear technology in any way, but see it rather as an opportunity to be investigated and utilised for the possible benefit of all concerned. But, especially nowadays, they also realise that there can sometimes be a downside to it. Everyone has to keep that idea in the back of their minds at all times, nowadays.
And then there are my non-information friends, a few of whom are fine with modern technology, but there are various others who sometimes struggle or who have a different perspective. The other day I was trying to explain to one of the latter about using Bluetooth to play music from a phone to a speaker. He didn’t understand what I was getting at, “I don’t really use my phone that much. Only for phoning, really”. Someone else who is a long-standing friend only checks his email about once a month.
There are others who are actually proud that they don’t own a smart mobile phone. And then, of course, there’s my friend Fat Mac, who as regular readers of this blog will know, has a unique attitude towards modern technology. “Ah hate a’ this fekkin stuff, Rodz, it’s jez a constant war wi’ ra effin machines as far as Ah’m concerned”, he often complains, vociferously. He hates all post-seventies technology. Sometimes, I can’t blame him, as he inevitably seems to choose the short straw when it comes to technology, even when all the straws are long.
For about ten years he’s been struggling to get the ‘photies’ he takes on his phone onto his laptop. Even though there are about twenty ways to do exactly that, he can’t cope with nineteen of them. If nothing happens when he connects his phone to his laptop via a cable, which is the only method he likes because he can physically see a cable going from his phone to his laptop, then he’s sunk. One thing Fat Mac is not, is a technology problem solver. Surprisingly, at the same time, he has mastered working all the zappers needed for his TV, and can quickly find a video on any platform of just about any boxing match from the 1970s (his main interest, apart from drinking).
Most of those friends who don’t like new technology and social media dislike the idea of what they see as a loss of privacy. Well, that’s entirely up to them, I suppose, and you have to respect their opinion. They’re the ones who are sometimes difficult to contact.
All of the above people, like myself, are pretty old or at least ‘getting on’.
Most young people, on the other hand, don’t have the same inhibitions/concerns when it comes to technology. My two sons and their friends simply use technology to the full.
I always tried to be up-to-date with technology before I retired. Back at library school in the mid-seventies I didn’t take the computer options, because it seemed to me as though computers, in those days, were not about people at all, but involved folk in backrooms loading punched cards, and doing things with them. When DOS and then Microsoft Windows came along, everything changed, and that’s when I became interested. Prior to that, I worked with an acoustic coupler, which was the latest gizmo at that time, only because it helped me answer researchers’ questions. I had no interest in how it actually worked. I disliked the tension it caused, because if you were slow or made an error it cost money, and I hated having to spend hours checking the bills.
More recently, technology has started to pass me by. I don’t watch many DVD movies, but when I do, it’s often a struggle using the PS2 controller to get them on the big flat screen. My sons don’t understand why this isn’t obvious to me, as PS2s have been around for ages, but I’ve never been a gamer. Someone showed me screen mirroring recently, and this is surely the way forward. People will have access to whatever and everything they are interested in via their mobile phones, and when they need to see things wherever they are on a bigger screen, they’ll use screen mirroring.
Another recent (I presume) thing is mindfulness and technology, #MindfulTechnology. In order to stop his rantings against technology, I’m going to suggest that Fat Mac takes it up as soon as possible.
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