There was really never any doubt
about it in the long term and despite an admittedly rather slow early learning
curve, it can plausibly be claimed that the Older Generation has come to terms
with the New Technology. By “the Older Generation” I mean anybody over 60 and
for the “New Technology” read personal computers, internet communication,
mobile phones and all the attendant gewgaws which make our simple lives so
baffling and expensive.
By saying that we Oldies had come
to terms with these novelties, I choose my words carefully. We do not much love
or embrace the New Technology. We observe goggle-eyed the manifold
conveniences it brings, have a vague working knowledge of how it basically
works but we sigh nostalgically for earlier and easier times.
Our own grandparents took a
frivolous view of high tech progress. Typical was their amusement at the
fantastic contraptions drawn by Heath
Robinson in the 1930s like the head-wart remover, steam-driven and
accomplishing its outlandish purpose via a complex system of weights and
pulleys. The Second War forced us to take technology seriously and many great
advances flowed through. Yet for our parents and in our own youth there were
some relatively fixed points. To communicate privately we used pen, ink and
paper to write and post eloquent or chatty letters at red pillar-boxes and we
used a fixed line telephone. These objects are rapidly becoming antiquarian
curiosities and to preserve their memory I attach photographs.
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| Pen, Ink and Paper |
 |
| A Rotary Dial Telephone |
The world of business spawned a multitude of gadgets and
machines. Colossally expensive mainframe computers were the province of the
largest companies but this was a world away from the modest commercial sector,
whose technology amounted to possession of a typewriter and various mechanical
calculating machines.
 |
| A Typewriter |
 |
| A Curta Calculator |
My boss in my early banking days was extremely proud of his
Curta Calculator, resembling a pepper-mill. You aligned numbers on slides round
the machine drum, cranked once for addition, pushing forward and cranking for
subtraction and other carriage-shifting for multiplication and division. It was
effective, if slightly comical, German in origin and derived from pin-wheel
machines first seen in the 18th century.
By the 1980s all these things were obsolescent. Computers
downsized, micro-processors and miniature chips made them commercially commonplace.
In time the dam broke completely, standards and protocols were established,
incompatibilities overcome, the Internet was born, Broadband proliferated and
the World-Wide-Web allowed anyone to communicate anywhere. The pace of change
has been dizzying and continues unabated.
In 1993, aged 51, I left the protective womb of my banking
employer, teeming with secretaries and young “techies” and I had to cope with
this Revolution myself. First I had to learn to type and, a late developer, I
soon bought my first personal computer. Thank goodness I had three keenly computer-literate
sons as without their generous help I would have been totally lost. Over the
years I have made hundreds of anguished pleas to them or disturbed them with
late night phone-calls whenever I got stuck – usually quickly resolved by a
single forgotten key-stroke. Now and then there have been slightly uncharitable
mutterings about my incipient Alzheimer’s or my moronic anxieties – probably
all Oldies suffer such occasional barbs. An Oldie friend tells me his
supportive children refer to him as a “techno twit”, probably typically enough,
if a tad unkind.
There remains a generational gap between the Oldies and the
rest of the cyber-space population. Some of it is just down to age; we boring
Oldies are not much interested in pop music blaring from unexpected sources or
in noisy games more suited to an amusement arcade than a family sitting-room.
It is just a matter of taste as I admit to playing Mozart on our I-Pod (wearing
ear-phones) and I will often have a gentle round of golf on our Nintendo Wii with
my lovely wife.
A greater divide is the vexed matter of privacy. I do not
want to be on permanent call and am quite happy to turn off my PC or mobile
phone. Most matters can wait the dawn of a new day, and we Oldies surely have
plenty of time on our hands. I cannot understand the urge to reveal all on
Facebook. By all means exchange social chit-chat and opinions but some Facebook
users are clearly obsessional and exhibitionist. I can just about understand
someone wanting to share an experience like visiting Chichen Itza or walking on
the Great Wall of China but news that they are devouring a burger at the
Walsall branch of MacDonald’s is banality in spades. I am also chary about
revealing my whereabouts in case Sony send up an unmanned drone to zap my Wi-Fi.
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| The all-powerful Smartphone |
It is also apparent that sitting for hours in front of a TV
monitor is deeply unsociable, a solitary vice practised by a vast monkish
Order, the TechnoTrappists. Caught up in one’s own interests, endlessly seeking
information, forever reading or writing emails means you are not sharing your
life with your partner or your family. This is surely no way to live and yet it
is a very common phenomenon. Now that the focus seems to be shifting from the
laptop to the all-powerful Smartphone, there is no sadder sight than to see
people constantly hunched over a phone texting their contacts, self-absorbed
and alienated. I say regulate and ration use of these machines and break the
shackles of their enchantment. Technology is our slave and we are its master,
not the other way round. Oldie or youngster, stay always connected with the
real world, converse, think, share, laugh, dream and dare – in short, Get a Life!
SMD
10/06/2012
Copyright Sidney Donald 2012
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