Major misconception: ‘Old people’ are ‘anti-gadget’ or ‘anti-technology’
There’s a major misconception floating around in our culture (at least some strains of “pop culture” here in the U.S.) that “old people” are somewhat high-tech “impaired” or downright anti-technology or anti-gadget, or some such silliness.
I have one caveat about my remarks here: One of the mentally sharpest, highly educated people I know personally (you know who you are, David) probably fits into this category. He’s a retired university history prof who avoids computers like they were carriers of the black plague. His wife finally got him to grudgingly read email his last year on faculty — but he still wouldn’t REPLY to the email.
My wife and I are both in our 60s (one of us is two years older than the other, but I won’t rat her out on this one, no sir) and we embrace technology. We each have a laptop computer (mine is Toshiba; hers Gateway) that we use daily. I’m the designated “IT” person in the house, so I keep our wireless home network running just fine. She does some blogging and a ton of email. She does professional freelance proofreading on her computer and sends files to editors via email.
The only reason we don’t have ipods or iphones is that we simply cannot justify the expense and time right now.
But we, as are almost all of the people our age that we know, are NOT in any way intimidated about jumping into new technology as the occasion arises. I personally am eager to try just about every shiny, new object I see looking around electronics and gadget sites — but money always is an issue right now. Besides, there are a lot of important and better things to do with our money than waste it on gadgets or HDTV.
Take it from these old people (if you want to call us “old,” that is), we Baby Boomers and pre-Baby Boomers are embracing the toys and gadgets just fine, thank you!
