By KAREN MADORIN
Hays Post
My Grandma marveled at changes she experienced starting with her birth in 1909. She lived through WW I and II, Korea, and Viet Nam. During childhood, she saw her home electrified and plumbed. When her family got a wall phone, they marveled. She talked about their first motorized vehicle and the joy of riding in airconditioned comfort decades later. Refrigeration changed cooking practices as did the advent of gas and electric stoves. She didn’t have a TV til the 60s, but she appreciated watching Walter Cronkite deliver news. Saturday night was not complete til she enjoyed Lawrence Welk before she studied the next day’s Sunday school lesson. Colorization improved Lawrence. She loved his co-stars’ bright dresses and suits.
I relished her childhood stories. From her dad driving a steam engine through Colorado mountains to tales of horse drawn carriages and wagons, they fascinated me. She described her mom’s delicious meals cooked on a wood stove, bathing in stove-heated water in a tin tub, and scrubbing laundry in it as well. She had one of her family’s kerosene lanterns, and I could imagine her lighting it as darkness descended. While she made it sound cozy, she let me know she appreciated modern improvements like electricity, air conditioners and forced air furnaces, hot and cold running water, washing machines and dryers, and her programmable oven that began baking before she came home for lunch.
What she saw as miracles, I take for granted. However, she didn’t live long enough for smart phones to not only connect her to the world but also deliver information at a touch and track appointments or provide weather warnings. On the other hand, she didn’t have to figure out what to do when it, her computer, or her Smart TV didn’t work.
Those issues aggravate us as we age. As digital immigrants who used computers for work, both of us feel like travelers in foreign territory when they don’t perform. While we appreciate advantages technology offers, we find ourselves in stress city when it doesn’t work.
Recently, we faced repeated challenges starting when our Fire Stick quit. We discovered we
didn’t have a business in town to call for onsite help after we failed to properly install that device Thank goodness, a savvy neighbor walked us through the step we’d missed and reconnected us to favorite programs.
Not long after we got the TV operating, our 4-year-old phone decided to go geriatric and prevent us from hearing incoming callers. Off to a treasured phone company employee to update phones. That went fine until a glitch in the I Phone program prevented us from getting texts and emails. Who knew how dependent we’d become on instant communication. It took our patient and tenacious tech 3 days to connect all the dots so our new phones performed properly. She had 10 years of trouble shooting under her belt that allowed her to solve the problem. We couldn’t begin to figure out what to do.
In addition to recruiting electricians, plumbers, carpenters, carpet layers, and car mechanics, communities need to encourage local tech wizards to stay in town. For a while yet, a generation of digital immigrants with limited vocabulary wander a foreign land needing professional guidance.
We haven’t seen the change my grandma did, but we’ve experienced enough we need expert direction with current technology. Tech Wizards, open a consulting business in your hometown. Customers await!