Okay–I know that I rarely exhibit sympathy for MAGA types, but a recent experience has reminded me that the pace of change–particularly, the rate at which the world is becoming digital–can be especially disorienting for older folks. Maddening, actually. And I say that as someone who has a smartphone and uses a computer daily.
My husband works out at our local Y with a couple of older men who still use flip phones. They’re deeply suspicious of all the newfangled technology, and they are also vocally MAGA. I’ve come to believe that–while it seems like a stretch– suspicion and disdain for the tech miracles of our brave new world and being receptive to oversimplified and racist world-views may go hand in hand.
A recent stay at a “chi chi” new hotel in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, has made me a bit more sympathetic to what must seem to some folks as an unwelcome and uncomfortable plunge into a science-fiction future.
Bear with me here.
I checked in and went to the elevator, which failed to open. After waiting for a brief time (and repeatedly pushing the button), I went back to the front desk, where the young man explained that the elevator would only work from lobby if you scanned your room key on a device mounted between the elevators before pushing the button. Nice safety feature–but there were no posted instructions that explained that. Evidently, younger folks found it intuitive.
When I got to the room, it became immediately obvious that the hotel didn’t cater to anyone one lacking a smartphone. There was no telephone in the room on which to call the desk or housekeeping, no printed materials with information about the hotel or its surroundings. What there was was a small plastic stand on the desk with QR codes, and a tiny message alerting guests that they could reach hotel services by texting a specific number.
Older guests unfamiliar with QR codes, or (unthinkable!) guests without smartphones would be unable to access hotel information. Worse–if your phone was out of juice and you’d forgotten to pack a charger (guilty as charged), the hotel didn’t have chargers (I asked). There was also no clock in the room, so if you lacked an operating phone, you didn’t know what time it was.
To say that this was all very frustrating would be an understatement. I tend to think that this particular hotel has gotten ahead of itself, but the experience did force me to recognize that I haven’t been very understanding of the people in my general age cohort (old) who encounter similar frustrations every day.
Noting the accelerated pace of change has become a cliche, obscuring the very real disorientation that so often accompanies it. America is full of people who reached adulthood before computers became ubiquitous–people who grew up with telephones firmly affixed to wires and walls, who drove cars that lacked computer screens and syrupy directions from a female GPS voice, who watched one of three networks on their televisions and read the local news on newsprint delivered to their doors daily. Etc.
Those same Americans have grandchildren for whom the avalanche of technology is intuitive–they grew up with it. Those grandkids are fixated on their screens, comfortable in a world that seems increasingly alien to their grandparents. Add to that the old folks’ daily encounter with the massive increases in America’s diversity, the contemporary prominence of women and people of color in positions of authority and celebrity, and older folks can be forgiven for feeling adrift, if not alienated, in a strange new world.
That alienation helps to explain–although it doesn’t excuse–their willingness to support a movement that blames nefarious “others” for their discomfort.
I realize that I need to be less judgmental, but it’s hard when people ignore the actual reasons for their discomfort and instead look for someone to blame…
Your description of a modern hotel is scary. I want no part of that. What an awful consumer interface. But I personally find no link to hating immigrants. That is logic that seems MAGA specific.
Kudos to you for sharing your experience. We’ve also experienced this in Omaha Ne. There was an actual phone in the room but alas, no dial tone. Q R codes everywhere. Thank god my daughter was in the same hotel to help guide us.
We often wonder if the rise of social discord is attributed to the rise of “smart” technology. We do adapt to this tech but it’s harder to adapt to our changing society.
Fear is a powerful motivator. And sadly we have leaders who exploit that fear.
I find my conversations with my own kids (ages 40 to 46) have seriously helped me navigate our tech world. They are kind and helpful adults who have blessed me with kind and helpful grandchildren.
“Let me help you with that, Grandma!” or “I can show you, Grandma” Have made me so proud of them.
I’m trying to turn this experience into a lemons to lemonade kind of thing.
It’s either that or succumb to being a punchline in my family’s memory.
Uh, oh, Sheila is slipping into the MAGA world of “anti-progress,” albeit a one-sided world. I still recall Trump’s speech about showers and toilets lacking water flow, prompting him to sign an Executive Order to eliminate water-conserving tools on both. “Drip, drip, drip…”
Next, he’ll sign EOs to add land-line phones back into hotels. Nah, he won’t do that because the phone carriers and NSA can’t eavesdrop (spy) on landlines. 😉
As I’ve shared before, my daughter, at six months old, picked up my cell phone and started scrolling. I’m the last age of the Boomer Generation, but she still knew inherently what to do. Maybe she picked it up from observing me, I don’t know. Now at 12, she sits with an iPad, a SmartPhone, and a book. Her daily goal is to read 100 pages per day, a choice of her own.
I’m pretty tech savvy, but not at her level. Everything that was “cool” last year is already obsolete. The world is speeding up. They used to say that if you don’t replace your tech that is four years old, you’re running antiquated equipment. For example, Xfinity just updated its equipment in my neighborhood and sent me a new router to install because it can’t utilize the new speeds. What does that say for the big screen TV I bought four years ago? Is it still relevant?
Advancement is not synonymous with progress. There is lots to be said for porches, chairs and gliders where conversation took, and can take, place. Technology can be overrated.
I’m with you on this one, Sheila. I still have a flip phone because I do not want to launch a spaceship, I want to make a phone call. But wait… there’s more this morning.
I am so angry this morning I could eat nails! The latest smack down by the Trump Administration of the First Amendment is last straw. What any of us can do about it I do not know, but what I do know is that the country has become some kind of dictatorship and we cannot wait until the next election to get it back. I’m open to all suggestions. Anyone?
Indeed. As we walk to and from the ballpark in downtown Denver, we see the scrolling generation deftly avoiding each other on the sidewalk as they seek “likes”. Riding on the bus to and from downtown, same thing. Everybody is scrolling. While looking over a shoulder, the sum of what I observed was utter nonsense, shopping for bling or scrolling for those elusive likes. Very little texting. The iphone, it seems, is just a filler for the lonely in those cases.
That said, I joked with my wife that buying an $800 dollar wrist watch should include a few rubies and emeralds. Alas.
Technology is my thing, so as a hobby, I keep up with it, or at least not far behind, and just doing that requires a great deal of attention. Once people fall behind, catching up can be impossible.
My son works for a corporate agency that serves a large part of NYS, which is largely empty; it has very low population density, and his job is to bring fiber internet service to people who are not good customers for it because they live so far apart from each other. His responsibility is “middle mile” fiber, which, when translated, means the wholesaling of what is as necessary for modern life as clean water or waste handling of all kinds. Information has become a necessity in contemporary life, just as water has always been.
All this is intended to highlight a trend in human life. The mass of collective human knowledge is so vast that the best individuals can do is to specialize in a narrow area of it and collaborate with others to obtain the products of other swaths.
This is antithetical to the religion of Capitalism, which posits the sanctity of competition in the face of the reality that Capitalism cannot exist in the absence of socialism. There are no instances of standalone Capitalism anywhere in this world or in history.
Understanding that and building it into worldviews are also concepts that require specialized knowledge.
We are victims of what sets us apart, and that is our ability to abstract sight and sound symbols that represent concepts in our memories.
We can’t catch up with ourselves.
Great job of describing the pain of technology and you didn’t mention “robot voices” or AI.
I can use some of the features on my cell phone, and like the previous one, there will be MANY things it can do that I’ll never know about.
The hotel experience is scary. We’ve encountered mild versions of that.
But, a lot of crazed MAGA’s are not old folks, and, I expect, are conversant with the new tech. Mostly, I’m a Luddite.
Mitch, a lot of “crazed MAGAs” are old people if you watch Trump’s road schticks. The gray and white hair are everywhere. I honestly don’t think any of them have SmartPhones because rural folks do not have reliable and cheap internet.
Before my folks passed last year, I was always getting calls to help with the “high-tech issues.” It was not the technology itself, but the operators of the tech. We’ve had remote controls for decades. LOL
I have tried to avoid the complication of having everything connected. Having retired from an IT networking career, I know how quickly things can stop working if even just one piece fails.
Sunday a Condo had an open house in our building. The unit is not occupied and had been staged by the realtor’s company. For the previous several nights, on my last dog walk, I had noticed ALL the lights were on in the unit. It was lit up like there was a party every night. I mentioned this to the realtor, and she said that there was a showing and somebodies phone died and they couldn’t turn off any of the lights before they left.
You have to be smart about technology!
Oh.. And Sheila, there is no excuse for a bad user interface (ie. no instructions on the elevator door).
A quick Google search explains why they feel they can get away with QR codes and no phones in the room. “As of late 2023, around 90% of U.S. adults own a smartphone, with a higher penetration among younger adults (97% for those 18-29) and a lower rate among older adults (76% for those 65+). Ownership also varies by income and education, with higher earners and more educated individuals being more likely to own smartphones. ”
I, too, struggle with all the “conveniences” of advanced technology. Recently, my smart TV displayed a message letting me know that WiFi was not connected. Then a day or so later, I lost the ability to text on my smart phone. Most recently, my printer went offline. It had been working fine the day before.
Two of the three resolved without me really doing anything but rebooting over days. Printer is still not functioning.
I do have a functioning smart watch that has not failed…yet.
To sum it up, I have spent literally thousands of dollars on a TV, laptop, phone and printer/fax/scanner, to say nothing of the monthly bills for all of the services necessary for those items to function. When I went for help at my service provider’s story, I was told that my 4 year old equipment was no longer supported as it was out of date.
I understand the frustration of dealing with online instructions that uses jargon. Printed instructions are almost useless. Online videos are better but don’t always explain that your device may have a different look that the one shown.
Sometimes I would like to just turn it all off and save myself time, money and energy. And, yes, I am old but not stupid. When I get condescended to by younger customer service people, it pisses me off.
Watching the younger people in my neighborhood who cannot seem to be alone without ear buds in or scrolling when out walking dogs or even pushing a stroller, it saddens me to know that they are missing all the sounds and sights of beauty in the world, free to all with eyes to see and ears to hear. Free! Imaging that!
Remember waaay back when the internet was hailed as a means to bring all people together? Technology doesn’t promote cruelty over compassion or hate over love or cowardice over bravery. Every technology is a tool which may be used in many ways. The rock that was used to crack a nut could also be used to crack a head. Every person will decide for themselves how to react to stresses and conflicts… just as they have been doing for tens of thousands of years. If our community, our society, our nation, our species finds the right balance points and solves our problems, good. If not, …
Just as Sheila used her hotel experience to expand her perspective instead of going berserk and burning down the building, we can make our own choices.
QR codes, is there a way to determine what it collects and where the info goes,before you use em.. theres a big push since trump to gather and make money by anyone. those so called rewards, yea, just drop your phone # into the keypad.. where does that go? again ,no one at the counter cares or knows. anytime you log into someones/thing wifi, your getting logged on to a collector. whos? again theres no way before you do this to determine what and where any of your vitals go. does it have the right to remain in your system until you do a shut down,that cleans out what your cookie file doesnt when you remove your cookies manually. does it, surf with you? ai your choices,or grab some phone/cell logs? theres no privacy on the net,and its designed that way by techs lobby. in Euro,they have a privacy law, GDRP and you have to opt in,before any tech can gather your info. google is fined billions every year because they decided euros laws dont count,and now they use trumps extortion value to give the euro people the finger. before ya use that trinket,think about what ai will bring next. and that baby is called profit with out regard for privacy.. that flip phone,i use one to. no data,no surf. just call and text..
JD:
reup the system because its down, ask why? theres a push to add apps and updates to your system when you shut down and start again as they want. theres no reason. the idea is, just load up and go. yea, thats another open door being installed into your system. im finding my own stuff being added to. call apple and ask what? as far as other items, ask why, get a answer,get a e mail confirming it. otherwise get off the systems that wont work for you.apps, deny them unless your totally aware of what it is doing in your system as a whole..
one other item T mobil. wants to use your internet to,provide calls in rural areas. theres no route 71 in their systems, route 71 provides tower use in rural areas. t mobil will not provide this. heres the catch, whos,internet system? yours. now they have IP addresses and your wifi carrier/s as? i use a wifi hot spot that has a sim card. by,another carrier that provides my internet hookup. my i,pad does not have a sim. its used by blue tooth to my hot spot. i shouldnt have to,provide intenet use to t mobil because they are a buncha cheap/intrusive corp demanding me to,use my othet devices to carry their cell service.. I never had this issue with any other carrier since cells inception..pay by online also. nope, no online(no app), just use the CC on file, whereas my control is still mine..
Preach–I work in healthcare and COVID was quick to bring forth telehealth opportunities since people could not come to ambulatory appointments. What a nightmare and since my patients were ‘geriatric’ and I myself am not great with technology and my doctors were also considered geriatrics given their age–it was a horrific nightmare.
The roll out was clunky, because as an institution we were not prepared for it. It was so bad–we just told patients to come to their appointments and we would wear masks. We did this without permission from Vandy but because the implementation was dreadful and none of us who had to use it were informed on how to do it.
We are a few years in and it is still clunky and I just think about all the folks who do not have or can’t afford smart phones, who are not savvy, who are older, etc…I know as a nurse I spend more time dealing w/ crappy technology than patient care. Its awful for all!
Sheila, for those without smartphones who want to know what time it is, there’s this great new invention — the wrist watch. You should check it out.
Sharon thank you for this one; “Remember waaay back when the internet was hailed as a means to bring all people together?”
The Internet has become a means of not needing to be bothered by people. Sit at home and use your phone to sell your old car and buy a new one; poor used and new car salesmen and women. Sales people are disappearing faster than Trump’s enemies in the media, especially journalists. I had to learn how to set the computerized system on my new toaster, my phone app that allowed me to converse with friends and save them from writer’s cramp due to my deafness suddenly is only conversing in Taiwanese and attempts to rectify the problem to return to United States English (yes, there are other versions of English) took me to a lengthy list of problem issues sans changing to the preferred language. Watching TV last night, I went to the kitchen to empty my tea glass and returned to find a message on the TV screen telling me to Verify I am Me. I am severely electronically challenged and called for help from my granddaughter who usually relies on her 11 year old daughter for help but we managed, using the TV Remote and the Cable Remote and going through the Netflix option we returned to my cable abilities. I miss the good old days of walking across the room to change channels and sometimes have fond memories of adjusting the rabbit ears to clear a blurry picture. My 125 cable channels are NOT 125 DIFFERENT cable channels; this is legal because we were not promised 125 DIFFERENT channels.
Two years ago after a 4-5 day power outage there was an actual local news report on NBC Channel 13 that we do not have enough electricity now to operate all to the electronic we have been convinced are vital to survive but more and more electrically operated things appear on the market to make our lives easier; they don’t all come with full instructions. We are expected to have this knowledge somewhere within out heads…or we call on our 11 year old grandchildren to show us how to work it.
Sheila, As a FW resident, I know exactly where you were staying. My 30 something daughter is my lifeline to technology and I don’t know how I would survive without her. I call her with questions almost every day.