I was chatting with Larry briefly the other night on the idea of what things are we going to be stumped by as we get older. It’s common to deal with the older generations nowadays not having the best grasp of technology and the internet, while those of us who grew up with it consider it just another essential and invaluable life skill. But to be fair about things, older adults, if they choose to be curious and embrace technology, definitely can get along perfectly fine with technology. My stepdad Harv was always ready and willing to embrace internet and computer technology, and it was great. Sure, there were peculiarities that he never seemed to get over, like seemingly clicking OK on every pop-up that ever arose on a website – just remembering all the shit I’d uninstall when coming over to diagnose his computer makes me laugh. I was always telling him to “Just Say NO” when those pop-ups would reappear, to no avail.
So what will it be that my generation (those of us just about to turn 40) is going to have trouble with? Is “trouble” the right word? Maybe it’s more the idea of what technologies are going to be essential to our lives contrasted to those we either don’t know about or we’re fine without them in our lives.
For me, the first thing that kind of comes to mind is the use of Snapchat. Don’t get me wrong, I text all the time. It’s a wildly useful communication method. But why is there a Snapchat? I don’t get it. You send a message that self-destructs after the recipient sees it. Now, obviously I can see the utility if you’re sending certain kinds of selfies, but I know for a fact people are sometimes just sending regular ol’ text messages. Why not just send a text message?
I’m totally channeling Andy Rooney right now, so I’ll stop. But it does interest me what future ideas and technologies coming our way will be those that I end up choosing to ignore (like I do Snapchat currently) or ones that possibly overwhelm me.
Yay for thinking about turning 40!