Keeping your head above water with technology

New technology is advancing at a pace never seen before. The year you were born determines how easy you are to adapt to new technology.

Having grandparents born in the late 1800’s and parents born in the early 1900’s gives me a different perspective on why my relatives were resistant to change. Change came very slow. When I was born in June, 1956, President Eisenhower was running for his second term, the Cold War was in full swing and televisions were only in black and white.

In our home, the refrigerator was called an “ice box” , since the iceman came to my parent’s childhood homes with blocks of ice. My mother hung clothes outside on a clothesline to dry in the summer and down in the basement in the winter. Buying a clothes dryer would come years later when our winger washing machine was replaced with a modern topload automatic model.

Now, I am in a position to have fond memories of technology gone away . No more 8 track tapes, cassette tapes or even CD’s. I went through all the phases of: car phone, bag phone, cell phone and now smartphone. My teenage son can’t imagine not having a computer, as I tell him that I was glad to use a circular slide rule to complete my calculations even before calculators were invented.

I am sure many of my generation are mad at being the guinea pigs of Microsoft having to put up with Windows me, Vista , XP , Windows 8 and now Windows 10. All of the PCers having to constantly learn how to get our work done. I made a promise to myself not to be another “boomer” stuck with his VCR flashing 12:00.

Now I having a hard time keeping my head above water with the current wave of technology. There is so much I have not experienced growing up in the last 20 years. There is no easy fix to help me adjust to all of the apps and multi device strategies that I see used with my 40 something nephews.

But all is not lost!

I can now see the bigger picture and can use the technology of today that works for me and also go back to the “old school” methods of the past which still work. I can only imagine what my youngest son will say to his children when he talks about missing his old technology.