3 Lessons on technology

Here are three simple lessons on technology underthinking it styles. The first stems from the other day when I was helping my Granddad with his new t.v. and it struck me that is very difficult for older people to pick up technology. It also dawned on me that the reason for this struggle is underthinking on their part, it is in fact the opposite, they need to know exactly how to do something before they attempt to do it.

Step 22: Open mouth as you raise sandwich towards your face

Young people aren't born with the innate ability to use technology it is just they underthink it, they just do things without worrying. They aren't afraid of failing if something doesn't work they just try something else, its not like things will break.

Yeah Technology is kid proof...

So okay it does break, so what gives the youth the freedom to try things, so they learn things quickly and intuitively, whereas adults need step by step instructions. It is the same reason kids are better and learning foreign languages, its not that they are any better, it is they aren't afraid to make mistakes. By making mistakes and being corrected they learn faster, because they are teaching themselves. The reason they aren't afraid is they don't care what people think of them, they aren't embarrassed by anything.

And I do mean anything...

Technology lesson 1. BE LIKE A CHILD, DON'T BE EMBARRASSED BY FAILURE, LEARN FROM IT

The second thing that I noticed about older people, is when it come to text messages they definitely fall into two groups, the under-adapters and the overadapters. The thing with a text message is that you get limited characters to get you message across, so you must choose your words wisely.

The Underadapter, is from the letter writing brigade where you open by addressing the recipient, ie Hello Patrick, and close by signing off your name ie. Yours Truly Francis.
This is nice ans formal and makes people feel appreciated, the problem is you have just used up 32 precious characters, that is 20% of your resources. And unnecessary characters at that, firstly you have sent the text to the recipient so they are aware to whom it may concern, and unless it is a first time text they most likely have your number stored in their phone, so know who it is from.

I wonder if this is from Kenny, he didn't sign off, so I guess we will never know?

The overadapter, they on the other hand have seen the young kids text. They know what it is about, you have to abbreviate. The problem is to them the kids these days are just dropping letters of wily-nily so they will do the same. So you end up with messages like this from them...

Cn u p u he mk frm the day   (Can you pick up the milk from the dairy)

That means nothing, although it appears the youth are dropping random letters they are still keeping enough for the message to be decipherable. The overadapters messages require a crack team of cryptographers to read the message before you know what they want.
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I think he wants you to pick up some milk from the store

Technology lesson 2: WHEN USING NEW COMMUNICATION METHODS, LEARN THE LINGO


Just in case you thought technology only baffles old people let me end with this. Young people these days have become so used to discpod's, iphones, and the like with their touchscreen techology, they are often baffled when they encounter things that have screens that aren't touch-sensitive.

How the frick do you change the effing channel on this thing.

Technology lesson 3: NOT EVERYTHING IS ADAPTING AS FAST AS YOU