Digital Dinosaurs

After years of vehemently denying that age is catching up, I have finally realized I have become old. I am no longer a digital native. I am a dinosaur. The kinds who live and die by the mechanical keyboards.

Mobile can never be my “first” device of choice. I do carry a smartphone and I do surf and fiddle with it all the time. But each time I have to do some “serious stuff” or write or email, I run to a secure corner, open my good old laptop with the giant keyboard and start typing. I have realized that from e-commerce, to surfing to just about doing anything else other than calling people up, I am just more comfortable with the desktop/ laptop.

While I was just about warming up to the idea of responsive websites (yeah the kinds that figure out whether you are logging in from mobile and change their layout accordingly!) I see all these mobilized millennials around me who pretend like there is nothing beyond mobiles. The kinds whose only device is a portable handheld. Who do everything from coding, shopping, flirting to eating and sleeping on their phones. I can never be like them.

I feel like the cynical grandpa who keeps telling kids about the “good old days”. The new generation of kids that are now growing up are not aware of things like – internet was not always available (you had to dial-up to it!) and that not every screen could be touched and interacted with.

Tch tch, reminds me of this famous quote by Douglas Adams. I have picked it up verbatim from his article published way back in 1999:

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.