Traveling Behind The Curve

I am a senior, out there dealing with  the world of today. And others of you out there who have found, somehow, that, like me, you have missed the technology boat that seems to have sailed on without us.  We have been missing lots of stuff going on around our ears while we thought we were following a path that seemed to us to be on the main stream. There was static which we tried our best to ignore. Now we find that we are definitely behind the curve.

Billions of people are hooked into a universe of which we have little consciousness. We know it is going on. We sometimes have to ask those who are more in the know to help us when we find ourselves in trouble.  Confronting the challenge of actually launching ourselves into that world is something we are sometimes fearful of taking on.

Look at some of the stuff going on!

Have you heard about artificial intelligence or A.I.? Somewhat mysterious, this speaks to systems that work for us by culling information from the whole body of accumulated knowledge on the internet, with the capacity to learn from their experience and get smarter as they go along. Some people have raised flags about these systems, fearing they may get smarter than humans and take over our world.

There are now efforts being made to regulate this force before it eats us alive. We have already seen that business operators are using this technology to eliminate thousands of jobs, seeking efficiencies to lower their costs. It makes us older folks happy to be retired.

You may have heard about algorithms. They are an example of this species that are used a lot in the stock market. They are designed so that if certain things happen in the market, (i.e. indicators,) they automatically initiate buy or sell actions across whole swathes of the market. Apparently there is more action in the market daily initiated by these algorithms than that initiated by individual retail investors. It’s frightening!

Have you heard about “streaming”? Those who know how to stream can get all sorts of material, (e.g. you-tube presentations, song-group releases, movies, news reports,) on their smart phones, Ipads and computers. People are discontinuing cable services in favor of “streaming”. .Some people believe that cable service will eventually come to an end.

So much is now being done with our smartphone! Aside from the taking of photos which we are now all used to, almost replacing cameras, many other things are happening. Now you can start your car, diagnose car trouble, power the lights in your house, check the batteries in your TV remote, transfer movies from your phone to your computer, lock and unlock your doors and switch on your lights in your house.

You can use your phone to scan codes to access web sites and get on an airplane, correct your spelling, track a phone number to its owner, remind you where you parked your car, tell you where you are and trigger a distress call, measure your heart rate or blood alcohol content, even help you to hang a picture straight in your house. Paying bills with our phones has become commonplace. A service is being launched, accessing medical professionals that may eliminate the family doctor. How many of us have already lost that access>

All around me are people looking down at their phones in touch with the events of the world around us. I have resolutely refused to add data to my smartphone while I just try to learn how to use the many simple apps that are available without it.

We know there are some things that we absolutely have to learn. These days almost nobody drives a car without having GoogleMaps on their phone. The old days of hunt and search for an address seems like part of the dark ages. And paying for long distance telephone charges seems stupid when there are so many ways to reach people without such charges.

How about Zoom? What a revolution that has  brought about? The whole remote work model has been made more possible, changing many people’s lives and locations.. And billions of dollars in value of commercial real estate value has disappeared as many towers in our largest cities sit empty. How many other things are available on our smartphones and computers that we haven’t the faintest idea about? Whatever we know, we know there is a lot we don’t know.

Lately, when I have a problem, I turn to one of my offspring, or a younger relation. Almost every time, my seemingly insoluble problem goes away.  What seems so simple to them seems complicated to us.

I don’t know about you, but as for me, I’m way behind the curve!