Ludditism

Luddite:

n.
1.Any of a group of British workers who between 1811 and 1816 rioted and destroyed laborsaving textile machinery in the belief that such machinery would diminish employment.
2.One who opposes technical or technological change.

Hubby and I finally got new phones. Our old ones were only three years old but between the batteries no longer lasting and my grandkids laughing at us for using antique devices, it seemed long overdue.
First came the careful choice about which provider to use ...and the astonishing discovery that in Canada there really isn't much difference between any of them.
Next came the decision of type of phone to get: I wanted an iphone; Ken wanted to support the Canadian manufacturer RIM & get a Blackberry. In the end the sales rep convinced me that I could do just as much with a Blackberry. I picked a Torch; Ken chose the Bold.
Last but most important came the choice of plan. Ken has long been a social butterfly, subscribing to Twitter, Facebook and whatever other social networks are out there. Took me a lot longer & I'm still only on Facebook ...and that because I accessed his Facebook account when Ken was having problems logging in. Once on, I never got out. I can see(read) what family and friends are doing much more readily than I ever could by phone or email.
My plan entitles me to receive emails. I get approximately 100 each day; it used to be mainly jokes at first, then I got into miniatures and started joining Yahoo forums and that's where most of my mail comes from now.
Ken's plan brings all the social networks to his phone.
Neither one of us have any other data plan figuring that if we're anywhere with free wifi we can surf more extensively ....besides I just bought a little 4lb notebook with 4 hour battery usage. This means that for 2 people, we make do with 3 laptops, 1 notebook and our new phones! Life is tough isn't it LOL!

The sales rep assured us that we'd probably spend the evening playing with our new toys; I insisted I'd be much too busy on my laptop. I was wrong!! Not only did I play all that evening but the next day and the one after that.....
I take my phone to bed & when I can't sleep or wake in the night (ADH causes sleep issues), instead of reading a book, I now read emails and check out what the other side of the world is saying on Facebook. I love my phone!
When waiting for my friend to finish shopping, I sit in my car playing on my phone. Once when I was laughing at something I'd read, I looked up to see a man in the car next to me looking rather strangely my way.
I play while standing in a queue.
I play when I arrive too early somewhere. I love my phone!
I've also discovered that the phone camera is almost as good as my actual camera.
Now having said all that, I am still a total newbie. My stepdaughter is moving back to Canada & needs furniture; today I took a picture of some night tables that I thought she might like to have. I could have easily transferred the photo to my laptop and sent her an email but instead I spent the entire afternoon trying to pull all my contacts into my phone ...not easy to do as Blackberries do not like separate address book folders. By late afternoon, I did manage to send my message from my phone with the photo attachment but I also ended up with a gigantic contact list and a new membership to a blackberry forum so that some day my phone contacts can become manageable again. Hmmm, more emails!

Poor Ken! First he discovered that the Blackberry Bold isn't as finger friendly or as see-able as the Torch so the morning after we'd gotten the phones, we exchanged his model for the same as what I had ....while waiting, I played on my phone.
Then for some reason, Ken seemed to become lost with the technology. It took forever to get him to set up his phone message retrieval. I am positive that he'd much prefer to go back to his old phone that does nothing more than send/receive calls. The more his phone is capable of, the less it works for him.
He has the same problem with his computer. Having passed typewriting 101 in high school with flying colors, he's now constantly frustrated that his typing apparently makes the laptop skip and zip off to nether regions. I'm positive that it's more a wonky keypad than his fingers but after a while of being frustrated anyone would begin to doubt themselves. And now comes the added frustration of not being able to use his new phone.

How do the elderly manage in a technologically driven world? It's no wonder I'm hearing so many complaints about kids doing nothing but play games or interacting so much on their networking sites. A friend ended up taking her 12 year old daughter's phone away. By her reckoning, the girl had made 13,000 texts in one week and that during a school week.
Surely it's not that our brains atrophy so much as we age that it becomes harder and harder to learn new things. I think it's more the case of practise makes perfect; either that or become a Luddite which is what I've jokingly started to call Ken.
Oops! Sorry gotta go. My phone's beeping; I think I just got another email ...and we all know how rude it is to ignore those.