In the time of my Grandparents, when you got a bill, you went to the bank and you paid it, with cash. While you were there, you got out the cash you needed to buy groceries, get your “hair done”, buy gas, whatever you needed cash for. Could you imagine if they had to understand the debit card? Actually my Grandma was alive until she was 90, and did have a debit card – she used it to get cash out to go shopping!
My Dad tells a great story of trying to explain the fax machine to my Grandpa. Gramps just could not fathom how a page could go through this machine, and the actual page stay here, and someone else, somewhere else be able to read it. Dad had to fax a page to someone and have them write on it and fax back before Grandpa could even begin to understand! He just could not wrap his head around the mechanics of that. He was from a time of the telegram, which was pretty high tech then, but people still were required to physically take a message from one place to another, none of this magic fax business!
I cannot imagine what would have happened if we had tried to explain email, paypal, voip, smart phones and the Internet to the generations of past! The leaps and bounds that we have had in our technology is simply amazing. My son was talking to a friend who recently moved to BC on his Xbox the other day. I use a magicjack phone, over the internet, erasing the need for the traditional phone service – and saving me a fortune! Cell phones, wireless this and that – all would have been otherworldly to my grandparents, and their parents before them. I mean from the party line phone to a cell phone – amazing!
We tried to explain the Internet and email to my Gram, it was completely beyond her, she just could not grasp how you put words, pictures and things in your computer and send them to people. They were not physical things in the computer, how could you send it anywhere?! My grandparents were amazed when they went to a movie with talking and colour – imagine if they saw 3D movies? 3D video games, high definition, pause live T.V., wow they would just lose their minds!
My parents – the baby boomers, have struggled to learn this new technology, they can email, and use debit and bank online, but it has been a huge learning curve. My generation uses email,Iinternet, and cell phones, we learned young, and use them as the tools they are. The generation after me takes all technology for granted – they want it better, faster, smaller, and Wi Fi enabled.
Just for fun I would love to take my son, and put him back in time to when my grandfather was a young man – he would not last a day! No video games? No high def? No cell phone? He would be crazy by noon!
