Print is dead, and soon you will be too.

I totally agree with the Sprint guy, we shouldn't be calling cellphones phones anymore. Personally, I can't wait to see what kind of technology is floating around when I'm in my nineties. That having been said, I should probably be careful about what I wish for.

My grandmother is ninety-three. I'm sure that at one time she wanted to see what would be around when she got to be so old. Keep in mind, she was born in 1915. During 1915, you could still find horse-drawn carriages in New York City. The telephone and the radio were still big deals.

For her generation, technological changes came gradually. Take television for example. When they first came about in the 1950's, TV's were huge. They were essentially pieces of furniture. They only came in black and white. . Eventually, sets got smaller and smaller, and the picture changed from black and white to color. It took roughly seventy years for televisions to get to where they are today. What I'm getting at is that Granny was able to keep up with the changes because they happened so gradually.

Computers are a completely different story. The internet didn't even come about until 1994, when my grandmother was seventy-nine years old. Needless to say, she wasn't quick to get online. In fact, she never has. She's completely fine with this, and I don't blame her at all.

What pisses me off is that my dear old granny gets letters and phone calls from her medical insurance provider telling her to make policy changes online. Are you kidding me? Really? She's ninety-three. Why the hell should online changes even be an option for her? She has a hard enough time reading in general, and these rat-bastards want her to go into cyper-land to read their fine print? Awesome.

To me this serves as a great example of technology being used just for technology's sake. Just because a medium is available for use, doesn't necessarily mean that it should be used. I think it also proves a point. No technology, no matter how inherently cool, is only as useful as you (as the user) decide. But, as usual, that's just my humble opinion.


(photo courtesy of Google Images.)