The other day I read an ad for a new kind of computer. This ad was in a magazine for the over fifty audience, and it was promoting a touchscreen computer, with a bright screen and no connector cables. It was designed for seniors who were overwhelmed by conventional computers. The ad made the point is that is too bad that seniors, whose quality of life could benefit from access to the world of the Internet and email, are the very group that has the most challenges in using computers.
At 65, I have friends, my age and a bit older, who use computers all the time and couldn’t live without them and all the latest gadgets. On the other hand, I also have some friends who use a computer in a limited way and still others who never learned and aren’t about to this late in life.
I have to say I am grateful that I am pretty comfortable with computers and gadgets, as it is helpful now and I think it will ensure me a better life when the body starts to fail. Unlike some folks, I find my brain is the best part of the brain/body package and I know as long as I can keep my brain engaged there will a reason to keep on living.
Looking back, I have to ask myself what made me a bit of a “techie” instead of a “technophobe.” There were definite decision points along the way. Decisions I made decades ago set the pattern and it has only continued. How easy it would have been to have gone the other way!
When I was in high school, my mother made me take personal typing. She could type and felt it would be useful for me in college to type term papers. And she was right! I always typed my own papers in college and in graduate school. I never thought of typing as secretarial work, even when I had a secretary to do it for me. I often found myself typing my own work rather than writing it out and giving it to someone else to type. Quite simply, I could think better while typing. The only problem was the whole thing about typos. Erasable bond paper became my best friend until they invented typewriters with correction ribbons.
When I was in graduate school, I had to write this 250+ page paper and it was no fun typing it on my electric typewriter. My husband had access to this amazing typewriter than recorded what you typed onto magnetic tape. I put that entire document into this machine and printed it out. And the best part was I could make corrections on the magnetic type.
But when my husband brought home his first home computer about 35 years ago, he tried to convince me I needed to use it. He told me I could put my magazine subscriber lists on it and my file of advertisers. I told him that I had other ways of doing that and it was more trouble than it was worth. But within a few months he got me to try it and I was hooked, though more often than not, confused.
Shortly afterwards , my husband got a flyer in the mail from Auburn University School of Engineering about a short course in microcomputers. It was being offered in Birmingham and I could stay with my parents. I decided to go and learn what I could. I was the only non-engineer in the class and thank goodness the course wasn’t graded.
Then I started using computers more and more. I had to have my own computer about 25 years ago and have had my own ever since. At work, I was the one who championed bringing in computers.
As the years went by, the computer got be
tter and more powerful. And I kept on upgrading and keeping with the changes. I have been using a laptop now for more than 15 years and some form of desktop machine for more 34 years.
But what would my life be like if I had never learned to type; or if I had rejected computers as irrelevant to me when they first came along?
I have a lot of sympathy for my friends who struggle with computers and with those who refuse to try. Thirty years of learning is a lot to catch up with quickly. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have never used a computer before and be faced with a new desktop computer, a sea of cables and only an online manual written in a tech speak, usually translated from some other language. I consider myself lucky to have made a few good choices decades ago.
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