Technology - good or bad?

When I bought my Blackberry, I thought about the 30-year business I ran with 1800 employees, all without a cell phone that plays music, takes videos, pictures and communicates with Facebook and Twitter. I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook, so my seven kids, their spouses, 13 grand kids and 2 great grand kids could communicate with me in the modern way. I figured I could handle something as simple as Twitter with only 140 characters of space.

That was before one of my grandkids hooked me up for Tweeter, Tweetree, Twhirl, Twitterfon, Tweetie and Twittererific Tweetdeck, Twitpix and something that sends every message to my cell phone and every other program within the texting world.

My phone was beeping every three minutes with the details of everything except the bowel movements of the entire next generation. I am not ready to live like this. I keep my cell phone in the garage in my golf bag.

The kids bought me a GPS for my last birthday because they say I get lost every now and then going over to the grocery store or library. I keep that in a box under my tool bench with the Blue tooth [it's red] phone I am supposed to use when I drive. I wore it once and was standing in line at Barnes and Noble talking to my wife and everyone in the nearest 50 yards was glaring at me. I had to take my hearing aid out to use it, and I got a little loud.

I mean the GPS looked pretty smart on my dash board, but the lady inside that gadget was the most annoying, rudest person I had run into in a long time. Every 10 minutes, she would sarcastically say, "Re-calc-u-lating." You would think that she could be nicer. It was like she could barely tolerate me. She would let go with a deep sigh and then tell me to make a U-turn at the next light. Then if I made a right turn instead... Well, it was not a good relationship.

When I get really lost now, I call my wife and tell her the name of the cross streets and while she is starting to develop the same tone as Gypsy, the GPS lady, at least she loves me.

To be perfectly frank, I am still trying to learn how to use the cordless phones in our house. We have had them for 4 years, but I still haven't figured out how I can lose three phones all at once and have to run around digging under chair cushions and checking bathrooms and the dirty laundry baskets when the phone rings.

The world is just getting too complex for me. They even mess me up every time I go to the grocery store. You would think they could settle on something themselves but this sudden "Paper or Plastic?" every time I check out just knocks me for a loop. I bought some of those cloth reusable bags to avoid looking confused, but I never remember to take them in with me.

Now I toss it back to them. When they ask me, "Paper or Plastic?" I just say, "Doesn't matter to me. I am bi-sacksual." Then it's their turn to stare at me with a blank look. I was recently asked if I tweet. I answered, No, but I do toot a lot."

P.S. I know some of you are not over 50. I sent it to you to allow you to forward it to those who are.

We senior citizens don't need any more gadgets. The TV remote and the garage door remote are about all we can handle.

Know the feeling, I used to have a mobile phone and in the end gave up with the thing. Sick of messing about with chargers and worrying myself sick if I accidentally left it at the coffee shop.

Since then life has become so much easier and relaxed. GPS road navigators can be useful for the county person whom ventures into the big city but they have to be manipulated so they do what you want them to do and not what they want to do.

Hi Jeff,

Very funny post and my wife loved the Bi Sacksual. LOL

My dad is right next to you in that boat they call SS Technology. I provide 24/7 tech support for most things he does, not that I mind, he is my dad, but I just wish he would RTFM??

I always advise him the following,

When trying to understand new technology, break it down into small part. Try and learn one or two features at a time and don't try and understand the whole thing all at once.

I had a bit of a chuckle to myself with all the gadgets you have in " Storage " . I bet you know how that 4500 of yours works and i'm sure that the 5000 is not under the bench??? It's all about the passion for the gadget, so get all those toys out and start learning them, but I do agree with allot of these new social networking site, what ever happened to picking up the phone and calling every now and then??

Another good tool is the Google Machine, ask it a question and there is always an answer or a quick way to do most things?

Good luck with it all

Pete

Dont worry Jeff ,the tech vaccuum keeps going, my son ,38 years old just picked up his new g4 phone,hes got every wiz bang tech thing you can get and always amazed me how he just new it all. Today at the family lunch,[ local tavern] ,I saw him hand it over to my 13 year old grandaughter to fine tune it after he had a go at it, phill

I know exactly how you feel, Jeff. My DVD player recorder sits below the new TV and only gets used to play a movie. I cannot figure out why there are 8 dozen plugs on the back of the TV. They must all do something but I'm buggered if I know what.

Our GPS is rarely used and then only to record a patch. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to Go To a lease. I did once figure out how to find a great shoal for fishing in Pioneer Bay at Airlie Beach but I had to take the manual, all 150 pages to work it out but then the next time we didn't have the manual so just pulled up and fished and did very well without the blasted thing.

Our car GPS isn't much better. We tried to put in Station Pier in Melbourne to get on the ferry to Tassie coming in from Geelong but it kept wanting us to go through the city.

As for our mobile phone, I refuse to even try to text. As far as I'm concerned a phone is for talking on not tweeting like a flamin' bird or getting emails Googling etc, I've got a laptop to get my Emails and it took me years to work out emails etc. For my mind a keyboard is for typing not playing games so I have never played a game on my laptop.

As for all the other new technology I'm being left further and further behind by it all. Someone said that if the radical muslims wanted to take over the western world all they had to do was figure out a way to prevent mobile phones from working and we would capitulate over night.

I recently saw one young bloke in a group of 5 kids all standing around in a group texting, but he had a phone in each hand.

When it comes to mobiles I will para-phrase Winston Churchell: Never has so much been said by so many that meant so little.

How did the world get on before mobile phones and computers? Pretty darned well, I'd say. A lot better maybe?

As for face book: well everyone wants their moment of fame and even being on face book is a kind of being published, sorta like self publishing a book you wrote. But remember, self publishing is also called Vanity Publishing.

Cheers, Jim

For those who like conspiracy theories.
What better for agencies like the CIA, ASIO etc who want
to know everything about everyone than to get everyone to write it
themselves on sites like Facebook.......

Gday

I am with you on this one Jeff, times have changed and unfortunately some of us older folk have not been that successful in keeping up the pace, while I embrace the internet, gps, and a mobile phone when away I have little or no interest in things like twitter and facebook, probably because its of no real use to me in my world and quite frankly I cant see the point, but I also felt this way when I first saw a shows like "big brother" and wondered how or why people got some kind of enjoyment out of watching a bunch of people doing day to day things and hoping that something interesting or rude might happen??, boring or what, anyway thats what passes for entertainment these days, and all these things like twitter that seem pointless to us is the new way the young socialise.

Having said that people in the generation before us would also see what we do, going on the internet, googling and answering peoples forum posts such as what I am doing now as pointless and of no interest to them, I have heard many comments from elderly people who are still freeked out by the very idea of using a keycard, and the workings of a basic computer is unfathomable to them as well, each generation feels comfortable in the way things were as they grew up but can be reluctant to change with the times.

I dont mind being a bit behind the times in some ways, but I really hate it when all you get from some young person that you have been relentlessly questioning about some product or another, is that look that they give you, you know the one, the one that means "how did you get so old being so dumb?", I suppose now its our turn to experience exactly the same thing we did to older people whan we were young, what goes round comes round I guess.

cheers

stayyerAU

Funny you should bring this subject up oh Jeff. My Mobile is usually quite placid apart from work and such. But when a full moon starts it cycle it goes of it's nut. All the ex girlfriend's start ringing. ? See I was right the first time.

Alan WA wrote:For those who like conspiracy theories.
What better for agencies like the CIA, ASIO etc who want
to know everything about everyone than to get everyone to write it
themselves on sites like Facebook.......

Don't Laugh that's exactly what there doing.

Good morning Jeff and other Technophobes,

It is not just communication technology that is complicated. Buy a $4 watch and it comes with a booklet and instructions on a par with learning to fly an aeroplane. My brain turns to porridge the moment I see a manual. That is why the GPS is still unused and sitting in the packet notwithstanding reading the full user's manual downloaded from the net, GPS for Dummies and various other references. I am in the market for a book called `GPS beyond dummies.'

I have a Nokia GSM which I have had now for about 13 years. I can text and it still works despite once drowning it and having to take it to the mobile phone doctor. The amazing thing about communications is that the larger the company the harder they are to communicate with although they offer carefully chosen offensive messages such as `Thank you for your patience." and `We value your call.' I am not patient and if they valued my call they would employ more operators and preferably in Australia.

I have two laptops (one of which recently died), a computer, 3 printers, and a tangle of wires like tangled fishing line.

But there is hope. I bought a Sony 1 DV3 so that I could get digital. And miracle of miracles. For the first time in my life I can prerecord. It displays all the individual channels and their programmes and you can scroll through for several days. Run the cursor along to a programme of interest and press the record button and you can actually pre-record. Mind you the commercial television networks regard their audiences with total contempt as on all the lesser channels they deliberately start or end programmes at times different to those advertised. I presume this is done to blindside their competitors so if you wish to change channels you will have missed the beginning of what's on elsewhere. This means you have to record your programme and the one preceding it and following it so that you can be sure of getting the entire programme. At least you can fast forward through the 15 minutes of advt breaks each half hour.

My final technology beef is to never buy a car with computer assisted operation or electric windows. I do not want to be in outback Queensland where components are not available and no one can understand how it works. Nor to be in a flash flood with failed electrics and being unable to get out the window.

Anyway, when you do go to take the trouble to learn how to fly any of these new devices, in a year's time they have become redundant and you have to start all over again.

Yours tropically, Harry

I feel for you Jeff, over the last few years I have felt the same way. I turned 50, in Sept 2011.

Life with all these gadgets can be so full on.

You even buy a caravan these days and they ask - do want sat nav, sat TV, sat internet, how many solar panles to drive the new plazma tv etc etc.

I was thinking lately - Life was pretty simple back in cave man days!

Acan

Yeah we are snowed under with BS these days.

Back in the early 1800s an explorer says to his missus:

"Well I'm off now luv, should be back in a couple of years........ Where are you going?........West, till I hit the ocean..........Which way you comming back?.......Oh. probably go north for 6 months and then East and do a bit of mappin on the way.........So, a couple of years you reckon........Yep, that should do it..........Well have fun, be sure to take a change of underpants..........No worries luv, If I'm not back in two years you might as well get married again

heard a story that goes something like this: two old blokes having a beer in the pub. One of them is trying to figure out a mobile phone. Next to them is a couple of young blokes. One of the young blokes looks across and says to the old blokes. You know you old buggers can't even work a mobile phone so how do you live in this day and age? Our generation has the internet, mobile phones, digital TV, space ships, the space station and a myriad other technological gadgets. What has your generation ever done? One old blokes looks across at the supercilious young prick and replies. We invented all that ****. So what has your generation ever done?

I visit this site regularly but don't post much, but I must compliment you Jeff on your post. I am not as old as you but sure can relate to everything you said and was bursting into laughter, several times through, we older people just want a simple uncomplicated life, but keep being pressurised to keep up by the younger generations, who just don't seem to understand that we DON'T NEED IT, to get by even if you think we do!
cheers
Lucy

Adrian, just imagine if you got up tomorrow and said to the wife and kids, now you all look after yourself I am off to find my eldorado, back in a couple of years. Love you all. Don't worry I will be back one day. OK dad see you sometime. Life was so simple. Acan

hi JEFF, i wish ! nice resume you have there, the business accumen in particular.
technology is wonderful, i think. without it, we would still be slicing our bread,and using rock hard butter.
if you watch the TV. ads, it,s simply amazing how technology is in shampoos, dish washing powders, everything. who wooda thunked that ? i,m only 59 y.o. ? but i embrace it to a level that suits me, i don,t need the latest and greatest gizzmo,
just to be trendy. if i,m lost, i work it out. ultimately tho, if the web is hacked thru terrorism, and the banks, governments,business goes down, we are screwed, BIG TIME. BASIC SURVIVAL WILL BE A MAJOR ISSUE. LEARN TO READ A MAP, USE A COMPASS,SURVIVAL SKILLS, we,re going to need them.




[ sent from my auto-bot hyper linked thought controlled processor. }

Acan wrote:Adrian, just imagine if you got up tomorrow and said to the wife and kids, now you all look after yourself I am off to find my eldorado, back in a couple of years. Love you all. Don't worry I will be back one day. OK dad see you sometime. Life was so simple. Acan

Mate, you have no idea how often I think of doing exactly that, like back in the old days when I only had myself to think about, and as much as I just want to disappear into the bush and forget this rat race, it isn't going to happen Well, I mean, wot appens wen me meds run art? an, an, ut mite rain n lightnin an stuff.

bessina wrote:I visit this site regularly but don't post much, but I must compliment you Jeff on your post. I am not as old as you but sure can relate to everything you said and was bursting into laughter, several times through, we older people just want a simple uncomplicated life, but keep being pressurised to keep up by the younger generations, who just don't seem to understand that we DON'T NEED IT, to get by even if you think we do!
cheers
Lucy

Had to smile when I read this, at work there are a few young fellows whom every morning tea or lunch break rush into the tea room and grab their smart phones.
Spend a few busy minutes looking to see what has been said on facebook or what sms messages have come in. They never fail to do this.

Myself I could not care less.

Jeff, I used to go to a lot of computer swapmeets around town, and some of the people were absolutely ancient (minimum 80 y.o for sure), yet they were into the technology like a randy bulldog to a human leg.
I suppose it's just a matter of how interested you are in all this tech stuff, staying young and keeping in with the trends.
Don't get me started on how many young idiots I see walking 'blindly' down the street, checking their iPhone for those so important Facebook/Twitter status updates, or with those ridiculous giant headphones on etc, nearly getting bowled over by the 220 to St Albans (in some cases, GETTING bowled over)
I keep my iPhone in my pocket where it BELONGS when I'm walking anywhere.

No, I'm not like you Jeff.

Google which 'owns' almost everything we post and say online has announced their new 'privacy' (or rather 'publication and connection of your information') policy, which takes effect on 1st March. It will connect everything we say (or have ever said) online from that date. Has anyone got an 'anonymous' persona or email account anywhere online? Well in less than 3 weeks, everything you have said and done online will be recorded as a "Single profile". So all of our accounts and anything said or done online in the past is being connected up so that google can 'personalise' our online experiences.

It also means that google will have more information about individual internet users than any government has ever had. Legally, any government will be able to demand that google hand over its collected information about individuals (which will be huge from March 1st) for any reason any government 'requires'.

This has serious implications for anyone who has used any google service like googleearth, youtube, *gmail*, blog comments, and a bunch of other google services that you mightn't realise are connected.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/

So, be warned. Jeff, throw away any of those new information-collecting things that you thought were grand and proved you were keeping up with the times. New technology is lovely except when a world-wide warning has been issued by google that they are about to data match your every move.

it was always going to happen. the web/ net is to powerful, a threat to the '' world powers ''. how to silence, control, world popular opinion ? gee, have a guess. you were warned in george orwell,s book - 1984. '' and they all laughed, and said it would never happen ''!!! too late now to start crying about ''freedom '' now. they are too strong, conversely, we, are too weak. reap the whirlwind, and we shall.
good luck.

I was clearing out some boxes in the shed the other day, and I found my old Slide Rule !!!!!!! Remember those. It brought a tear to my eye.
panhead

Well there is a spooky conincidence; I found my old circular rule just the other day.
Digital calcs had been around a long time before I gave up on the slide rule. The main reason I don't use it now is because I cannot read the scales anymore. Otherwise it is a pretty fast calculator once you become proficient.

jef i know how you feel i just wish the phone cos would just make a phone that just rings so you can answer it and talk and does nothing else,wouldnt it be nice ,cheers al////

Like all things it can be both. ATMs great for after hours banking...not good for the tellers. Self serve checkouts. Mobile phones are a pest....until an emergency. etc etc. Conspiracy....yep big bro is here just a few years after Orson Wells said it would be. Just my .2s worth.