Over the past long weekend, we had a mid-70s and mid-80s aged couples as guests here at Froglevel Resort. The mid-80s couple are an intelligent, well-spoken, and wealthy couple but it was almost sad to see them struggling with the realization that they were so far behind in technology. Now, I'm not referring to my latest quasi-insane experiments and tech forays (which can be, well, admittedly bizarre at first glance) but more mainstream stuff like Roombas, streaming, voip, and smartphones.  The sad part was that they could easily see that much of it was an inexpensive way to improve their lifestyle, in some cases even cheaper (voip, smarphones) than their old ways.

(But RC's Replicator gob-smacked them.)

barriers are getting lower though I think - i know there was a bigger financial constraint but earlier technology like cars, telephones, air travel hadd a really long adoption curve,  todays elders catch up quicker than yesterdays elders.

managed to find some info on it here http://www.alicebot.org/articles/wallace/curve.html but would like to see the graphs!

Higher life expectancy & faster technological change surely play a part. Those in their late 80s were born before programmable computers existed.

Maybe it's a one-generation only thing though... kids today start working with some kind of device at an early age.

The older generations were used to fast technological change.  When my Father was born, biplanes were still the rule and yet he lived through all the advances of World War II, turbo-props, jets, breaking the sound barrier, the space program, watching men walk on the moon, etc., all in one lifetime.  But for them technology was physical and largely mechanical: electric typewriters, turbines, radial tires, it's a harder leap when you can't see anything physical to get a grasp of.  Young people just treat it like fiction, suspend disbelief and accept that the computer can really do all that number crunching and tell us where the nearest bar is!

Brad, you make an interesting point.  I think I said this before, but I think Baby Boomers tend to be more technophobic than their parent's generation.  My grandfather had a 286 back in the 80s.  He wasn't a programmer or engineer, but an accountant.

In contrast, my baby boomer neighbor is so afraid of of tech that he uses a typewriter to type up an email and then hands it to his wife so that she may copy it into an email.  My mother and my father-in-law are both so intimidated by devices that its like their brains just shut off when it comes to this stuff.  Not to pick on my mother, but she once threw out the power cord to her laptop and then wondered why it stopped working.

I'm not saying it is universal, just what I've seen.  I think it is this way because the devices/appliances/machines of the 1950s - 1970s tended to be very single purpose and push-button. In contrast the devices/appliances/machines pre-1950s often had to be tweaked a lot to work.

I had mentioned the same to my friend/mentor/sounding-box. His reply:

QuoteIt seems like no one is doing a good job with that market.    I see  ads in Smithsonian magazine for dumb flip phones with HUGE buttons and that's about it.

I have a friend  here who really hates computers and struggles to use them in his job.  The people who advise him are incapable of understanding his limitations and  offer solutions that are totally unworkable for him.    

We need a better 'geek-to-human-interface'

I saw that several instances of "incapable of understanding his limitations" in action this weekend. I tried to dumb down several things, smartphones for example, and the other couple overwhelmed them with an eye-glazing barrage of look-at-everything-my-phone-can-do.

>Baby Boomers

Keep in mind that the oldest of the Boomers tried every mind altering chemical known to man in an effort to get stoned. Theirs was an inner search all about themselves for their essential "Me-dom".    Now they are desperately eating organic, free range, non-gmo, high fiber, trying to undo all the damage they did to themselves in their youth. *irony*

>Theirs was an inner search all about themselves for their essential "Me-dom".

Which is worse, grandma's drugs or granddaughter's selfie stick?

>worse

Nobody has yet outdone the "Me Generation" at Me-dom.

(Full disclosure. I'm a member of the Baby Boomers, but at the very tail end so I missed out on all the free love in the university library and pushing VW minibuses out of the mud at Woodstock.)   

I never inhaled.

I have to say, my dad (86 years old) was always hopeless. He would subscribe to PC Magazine for his office and read the magazine but never really figure out the computer. He retired before email really became a "thing" but late in his career, group voicemail was a thing and he once told me "My new boss was driving me crazy. Every time I'd pick up the phone it would beep at me and say I had new message. But I finally figured out that you just hit *9 and it deletes them all" (he was somewhat of an institution and I'm quite sure it would have been easier for him to get his new boss fired than the other way around if it came down to it).

The other day I call him and he picks up and I say "I don't want to keep you" and he says "No problem, I'm just driving. I have Bluetooth in my new car. It's amazing. Hooks up to everything. I can answer the phone from a button on the steering wheel."

We just spent two weeks traveling together. None of us had phones that worked in Ireland. My wife and I are standing out in the street trying to find something on a paper map and he says "It's just a couple blocks that way." I say "Huh? How do you know that?" He says "Google Maps. That hotel has an open wifi network" and he turns his phone around and sure enough, he's nabbed an open wifi connection and has the destination up on his phone on Google Maps.

So ya just never know.