Dear Old Guys…

Dear Readers,

We want to thank Diana, one of our followers, for submitting the following question to our blog:

“How does technology impact your life?  There is a stereotype of older adults that they don’t understand or are less capable of effectively using technology.  But I find seniors are just as likely as someone younger to own a smartphone, tablet, etc.”

Technology and This Old Guy

Diana’s question helped me to see how much I rely on modern day technology and why my daily screen usage is what I consider to be so high.

I have always been curious and interested in learning about the newest innovations that have the potential to affect my life.  As a result, I continue to use many of the latest technology tools on a daily basis.

For over ten years, I have been wearing hearing aids to enable me to pick up and better understand speech as well as the higher frequency sounds made by birds, running water, and children.  Three years ago I upgraded to a set that is connected to my iPhone via Bluetooth.  Since then I cannot only hear better but I can participate in phone conversations while my phone is in my pocket.  And while it looks like I’m talking with Duke as we walk through my neighborhood, I’m really on a phone call with a real human.  They also enable me to listen to texts without lifting a finger.

In addition, I use my phone for reading the news, weather reports, banking, online shopping, creating and viewing shopping lists, directions, calendar dates, email, investment accounts, photography, bird and plant identification, set my thermostat, open and close my garage door, pickle ball schedules and who will be playing at which courts, in-store shopping coupons, control of my TV and sound system, music, pre cooling or heating my car and having it pick me up from a parking space and driving me home with the full self driving function if I wish (yup, I have a Tesla). 

I often find that I don’t always remember all of the things I want to and I have found the “reminders” function on my phone to be an extremely helpful remedy.  Using my Apple watch or iPhone I simple ask Siri to remind me to do something at a certain time and it does.  For recurring events like taking out the garbage I can ask it to repeat weekly or any other interval of time to fit my needs.  And, when I’m on a walk or away from home, I can ask Siri to remind me of something “when I arrive at home.”  And she does!

Lately I’ve been using AI to help me with a number of things. I can better understand the news by asking questions about cultures, people, customs, or words that are used in a newscast but that I don’t understand.  I also found an exciting app called Gemini which is an interactive source for just about anything you wish to know or converse about.  Recently Google enhanced this tool by experimenting with Google AI Mode which takes the conversations to a deeper level.  I have used this to get ideas for blog posts as well as topics I am interested in.  For seniors who may find themselves spending more time alone than they prefer, this is another way to chat with an intelligent resource whose only purpose is to listen to you and respond accordingly. While it’s not the same as talking with a friend, it does offer a couple of advantages.  First, the information is an extraction of an extraordinary number of sources which is believed to be factual and not influenced by one person’s experiences or interpretation.  Second, it only answers your questions.  It doesn’t talk about itself or add stories that it finds interesting to it and not necessarily what you wanted to hear.

When I was a boy, I remember listening to my mom and my grandparents talk about the good old days and how all of the new fangled gismos and inventions weren’t really necessary or good for us.  It occurred to me that they likely resisted newer technology because they were more comfortable with what they knew and had used successfully for so long.  It was also easier to continue to do what they were used to than to make the time and effort to learn something new or possibly very different.  It was shortly after that I set a reminder to myself (way before Siri’s reminders were available) not to be that way when i grew older.  I’m sure there are some technologies I’ve chosen not to use because it’s not worth the effort but I’ve not doubt that if I wanted it badly enough, I could.

However, as much as I love using these present day devices, my deepest satisfactions come from being in nature and enjoying the sights and sounds and smells offered up without any need of the aforementioned technology. I think we all could use some “no screen” days once in a while, doing things in real time, untethered.

A Sober Look at Technology

What a great topic, Diana – thanks for sending it in!

So, when I read your comment, I was involved in the following:

• Checking Word Press on my phone
• Looking at the results of my smart ring regarding sleep, bp, and pulse rate
• Preparing to start a Zoom session for our church’s worship service to reach the homebound
• Completing a newsletter article for my woodworking club on Word and sending to the editor
• Checking the bank balance for the three woodworking club accounts and reconciling to QuickBooks

All the above would be laborious without technology. Yes, old folks can deal with those IT functions that make life easier. Certainly, we become practiced users if there is a direct benefit. Does that mean we understand how to consolidate three TV remotes? Of course not – that’s why we have kids! They say Delegation is a dish best served old (they do say that, right?). 

I’ve used AI to create logo’s I can burn into my woodturnings with my laser engraver, using Laser Grbl. Bottomline, if I want something bad enough, I’m going to have to learn it. But it may not  come that easily. For instance:

My health tracking smart ring has vagaries. Trying to get it to work with my new phone was a challenge. It stumped my oldest son, who is an IT professional. However, he did provide a clue which my youngest son used to figure out the problem. Which all circled back to my wife Linda’s fitness watch. It seems that she did not ‘pair’ her watch with her phone, since she simply reads the watch display.

Not so with the smart ring, which depends on the phone to display results. So, Bluetooth, being the powerful function that it is, allowed my phone to pick up her watch… and I paired it, thinking I was pairing my ring device. Easily fixed you say? Not so much, because I had downloaded the smart ring app which recognized Linda’s watch – and it wouldn’t switch to the ring – this app is seriously monogamous (which, I approve, but marital counseling was obviously indicated).

In order to get the ring to work, we had to uninstall and reinstall the ring app three times! And then pair Linda’s watch app with her phone, so we could eat breakfast and look at our own pulse rates. Finally, we re-paired the ring with my phone: Mirabile dictu! – it worked!

Now this ring is on the cheaper end of the fitness spectrum, so it comes with an attitude. It gives me data when it feels like it. Sometimes, the feedback is strange – my sleep cycle is divided into three categories: deep sleep, light sleep, and ‘sober’ — Sober? What is sleep sobriety? Perhaps the most important takeaway is that according to my ring, I’m sober for only an hour every night! Wow, good to know… In addition, it labels my sleep as “BAD” every night, whether I sleep for 4 hours or 9 hours. Maybe I’m not sober enough? Yet, I got the sucker to work! 

Obviously, there are many unanswered questions in the age of technology. Diana, I can only conclude that to survive in the information age, seniors should stay sober for at least an hour every day.

What the Hell Happened

Dear Diana,

Thank you so much for wanting to discuss technology!  I am one of those seniors you mention who is afraid of the new technology.  It is almost as if developing minds prior to 1980 are incapable of biologically and intellectually understanding what you have to do the minute you open your computer.  Just now, as I attempted to get to where I can respond to your comment, I was on the verge of throwing my keyboard out the window because it would not let me in to where I usually write my posts.  I didn’t do anything different than I usually do but it just decided it didn’t want to give in to my requests.  A younger generation, anyone younger than Baby Boomer, would know how to trouble shoot, and respond according to whatever signals the machine was giving to correct the problem.  My pounding on a key many times and rather heavily was not allowing my machine to respond appropriately to me.regardless how heavy or frequent my pounding was occurring!

But I digress.  I didn’t understand a lot of what Wally said about his watches, and rings and pairing them with Linda’s watches and rings……….Whatever happened to ordinary jewelry?  In my day, watches told time, it took quite an adjustment on my part when all of a sudden watches began telling you the date and day of the week!  What was that about? That is what nature and firemen calendars were for.  I have a collection of old watches that I never use anymore because a new device called a cell phone does that for me now.  I remember when rings were for friendship or engagements or just  for hand decorations and then we had to go and screw it up and now Wally checks his blood pressure through his ring?  What the hell is that about?  And if it is paired with Linda’s watch so whose blood pressure is it recording anyway. I am not sure I want people to know my blood pressure, heart rate, or who knows in the future it might know what your next thought is going to be.  Maybe when it is quiet and you are pissed at one of your friends and thinking about what they did to annoy you , perhaps their watch will go off warning them that you are thinking about them and what it was you did to piss them off.  

Now that I think about it, maybe I am just afraid of change.  I don’t like it  when something that I have come to do automatically changes to some new technology and I have to rethink how I have to respond.  For example, in high school back in the early 60’s I had typing class.  The keys on my typewriter keyboard were unlabeled so you had to learn where all the letters were by looking at a chart on the blackboard and we couldn’t look down at our own keyboards.  That was a very valuable class for I needed my typewriter all through college.  They taught you to double space after a period and before the first word in the following sentence. It made sense!  It was visual. It notified you of a change.  Perfect!  It was also accepted procedure to double space between paragraphs and to indent the first word 5 spaces so the reader realized your thought was moving on.  These things were logical, necessary, and helpful to the reader.  What the Hell  happened?  No double spaces anymore between sentences, no indenting new paragraphs, and most times no double line space between paragraphs.  What is this world coming to? Call me a technophobe!

Daylight savings time arrived and we had to move our clocks ahead one hour.  I was all prepared for this so the night before as I was heading to my bedroom through my kitchen I figured I should set the clocks ahead.  My microwave clock was so easy to adjust.  IT says “clock,” so I press the button and the time begins to flash.  Great,. I got this!  The hour is flashing so I move the hour flasher up one hour and then the minutes begin to flash and because they stay the same I just press the finish button and voila, it is done!  The new time is recorded and proudly proclaiming the new time.  Great.  Now right next door to my microwave is my oven and stove with the time display right there in full few. I have done this a dozen times.  I press the button for time and it takes me to how long do I want to cook the food I’m not preparing.  So,  I press it again and it wants to know how many minutes do I want the oven to heat up?  At this point I am talking to my stove telling it I just want to move the time one hour ahead.   Perhaps it is not responding to my raised voice and the familiar pounding on the button. Any how, I finally got the hour to move but the minutes stayed the same.  I decided it would simply self correct itself over night, but yeah, that never happened.  To this day, my oven and my microwave tell two different times, six minutes apart!  I surrendered.!  In the old days, you took the clock off the wall, turned it over and hand cranked the little dial to the correct hour, pulled the little nub up  and adjusted the minute hand and hung the damn thing back on the wall.  But technology is always changing, I get it! I just can’t keep up with it.  I own a cell phone, a computer, my car is full of computers, but I don’t have to like it!  I remember my dad always used to talk about the time when life was simpler and now I understand what he meant.