For example I’m in my late 20s, so my parents had to adapt to smart phones, social media, etc. while I kind of grew up with it
For example I’m in my late 20s, so my parents had to adapt to smart phones, social media, etc. while I kind of grew up with it
Comments
Please do not comment directly to this post unless you are Gen X or older (born 1980 or before). See this post, the rules, and the sidebar for details. Thank you for your submission, Ok_Response_4016.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Back in the mid 1950s my grandfather was fascinated by and couldn’t understand how transistor radios worked. “A radio in my pocket!? What’s next?”
VCR’s
Computers. They didn’t have a hard time understanding the machine but they didn’t see what the benefit could be for their every day life.
My SilGen mother took to computers pretty quickly and could run rings around me with Excel macros. My uncle was in IT, and I’ve been in IT for about 30 years. My younger brother finally decided he needed to learn.
My dad was an old style commercial artist. He did everything by hand and was very good at it. He was also a commercial art instructor at a technical college at the end of his career in the ’90s. He didn’t want to retire, but everything in the industry was moving toward computer graphics and my dad either couldn’t learn, didn’t want to learn, or both.
vcrs and computers in general. vcrs were easy in that you could pop a tape in and press play and that was that. It was when you wanted to do more complex things with it like taping the ball game when you were out shopping that was the problem for them. My dad never learned how to use a computer, he couldn’t even comprehend what the mouse was for.
My parents were (at first) baffled by computers. They were used to physically defined things which didn’t change, like a typewriter. They wanted to read the instructions and master the device.
A software defined thing, with embedded documentation, which changed with each new software release… that was frustrating for them. The idea you had to turn it on and fool with it was the exact opposite of how they had mastered other devices.
Changing configuration and user interfaces was astounding and perplexing. You can’t move the keys on a typewriter QWERTY keyboard. But you can change tabs and icons. Now it doesn’t match the workbook from their computer course.
But eventually it all clicked.
Dad was a stock and commodity futures investor. He moved to internet price quotes and realized paper quotes a day old were an insurmountable handicap.
Mom figured out emailing digital pictures and social media let her keep up with friends and family scattered around the world.
They found the use cases they cared about and the machine itself disappeared into the background.
In the 70s and 80s, my mother did temporary office work, mostly typing. Increasingly, the jobs she was assigned to required word processing work. For her that was a hard no, so by the late 80s she was largely “retired.”
The internet. I once caught my dad sitting at my computer. I asked him what he was doing and he said confidently, “Googling.” The PC wasn’t even on, bless him. Made me laugh a lot. He was so pleased that he actually knew the word Google.
He used to always go “Oh my God, your name is on the telly!” whenever I logged into iPlayer to let him watch something he missed. He thought I was famous or something.
I grew up in the 60s, and I can’t think of a single technology that emerged then. It was more a time of social and societal changes that my parents generation struggled with.
The steam engine.
None. She didn’t care about vinyl and adopted all new music technologies as soon as they proved themselves more convenient, especially since she liked traveling with music and audio books. Cell phones brought freedom for the traveler, so she adopted early. Tablets brought pictures and conversations from and with kids and grandkids, so she figured them out. Her TV setup was so complex I had trouble with it, lol. She literally had to convince me that online banking was easy and safe. She had no problem with new technologies. Her POV was that they were here for her convenience and she wasn’t wrong.
My mom had to experience microwave ovens, which she protested for at least 10 years. She finally gave in when my sister gave my mom one that she was planning to sell. 😁
My dad never went digital. Born in ‘27 he was retired, and when we got our first home PC, he didn’t touch it. Tried to give him a smartphone as he got older, never learned how to use it. Put it in a drawer. 😂 He never adapted whatsoever. Didn’t pass until 5 years ago, so I would imagine it was somewhat strange to watch technology progress and people start looking down at phones. Or maybe not.
The internet. My dad died in ’06, so he never was interested. But my mom wanted to use the internet so badly, and I tried and tried to show her. She just couldn’t understand it.
Computers. My dad worked in the USAF, I believe he was involved at one point in determining missile trajectories (dumb missiles – you point them and hope they hit the target – slightly more sophisticated than artillery).
The “wire it yourself” computers were coming along, and Dad thought it would be easy. It took months to get the program right.
By the time I hit computers, we had punch cards, and within a decade that changed to terminals. The personal computer (PC) was not far behind that. Once the transition from vacuum tubes to transistors to printed circuits was made, growth was exponential.
None. My parents were pretty tech savvy. I’m just glad that I grew up before child-tracking tools became accessible.
Understanding technology and using it are two very different things. I don’t recall my parents (born in 1906 and 1910) struggling with any technology in particular, probably because things were pretty straightforward and changes were very gradual. I am 79 and retired many years ago from a technical job. I can operate at a rudimentary level most of the new devices I have encountered but I don’t understand them. I have new cars, Iphones, Apple watch, computers, etc. and I use them constantly but I don’t really know how they work and doubt most people do – they are like magic. I can perform an operation once and it works fine but the next time doing the exact same thing it does not. Every time I drive a new or different car I have to learn how everything works but I don’t understand any of it. I have an acoustic guitar and understand how that works but give me an electric guitar with all the electronic possibilities and I would be totally lost even though I might be able to play it.
Dad was a retired metallurgical engineer (Class of 1953) and caught on to tech really quickly. Mom was equally smart but just didn’t get it. She knew how to calculate the extra to make double principal payments on the mortgage every month but I once listened to Dad patiently walking her through a simple PC process over the phone and she clearly was having problems. He later told me he’d shown her in person and she’d taken notes. Mom died first and Dad 5 years later. She would have been lost with all the daily stuff that pretty much requires a smartphone. I hope I never lose my grasp of technology.
My father adapted to everything. Nothing surprised him. His career revolved around technology so he never blinked at anything. My mother adapted but there were things that she preferred doing as she had for 50 years. Dad never looked back.
I wished I could have disabled the Input button on my Dad’s TV remote. Actually, if I could have bought him a TV with just Fox News and The Weather Channel, my life would have improved greatly.
VCR’s
Computers.
Cell phones
I was born in the late 1960’s so yes, I can name a ton of them, VCR, computers, the internet, cell phones with text messaging, ….
My parents were accepting of new tech bur when the Walkman came out they couldn’t understand why people would walk around with headphones on. Yeah I’m old.
VCR
I think PCs far more than phones.
Television
My great aunt was born circa 1907. We wanted to buy her a microwave oven in the late 80’s, but she couldn’t understand how they worked and was afraid to use it. Does that count?
As a kid talking to her was a blessing. I was learning about the Great Depression during history class, and here was someone who went through it in her 20’s!
Credit cards. They couldn’t stay in business unless they accepted credit cards and paid commission to Visa? Customers went in debt to buy stuff? They couldn’t believe it.
They never had a credit card and paid for everything with cash or a check. Even cars. They saved up to buy a car. When they bought one, they started saving to buy the next one.
DVDs. My dad bought a DVD player and a bunch of movies. Two days later, he took them all back, saying they didn’t work. He was putting them in the player upside down.
My parents were sort of technophobic from the COST angle, but it could have been intimidation of new things, and I wouldn’t have known. My parents weren’t poor, just cheap. So even though my friends’ parents had microwaves, VCRs, cable TV, video games, and even large TVs in the late 70s, early 80s… all we had were two small portable TVs and a toaster oven as “modern conveniences” beyond the normal appliances still prevalent two decades earlier (radio, oven, fridge, etc).
I was the first with a computer, an old Timex Sinclair 1000 a friend didn’t want. I was told to hide it from my dad because “he works with computers all day, he doesn’t want to come home to them.” My dad was an electronics engineer, with a PhD even, but he had no love of technology beyond boat and car engines. I think if my mom were still alive today (she died in the mid 1980s), things like the Internet and smartphones would have confounded her. My dad is still alive, I think, but his wife does all the emails and stuff.
Apart from that, I was kind of on my own and self-educated, so I didn’t interact with them much, except stuff like “the dryer stopped heating again, could you look at it? Your father won’t.” And I also wanted dry clothes, so I was kind of forced to.
As a teen, the big tech changes were silicon chips, which while invented in the late 60s, didn’t start showing up everywhere until the mid-late 70s. Before that, it was transistors. The rise of “Made in Japan” went from “cheap crap” to “very skilled and cheap.” Made in Japan used to be a joke, like they say about cheap Chinese knockoffs today, but by the late 1970s, people stopped saying that when Japanese cars started dominating the landscape, especially during the gas crisis.
Digital watches. My dad would hand his watch to me and say “it beeps”.
Virtual work.
Had to show my dad my paystub, because he couldn’t quite believe I was actually employed at home in front of a laptop and on the phone.
Only the same things that I have a hard time understanding. I still couldn’t program a VCR to save my life. I totally fail to understand why so many people these days shell out thousands of dollars a year for toys and entertainment, and I fail to understand why they trust hyperlinks.
7 transistor radios
The microwave oven, the VCR, cable TV, cordless phones, cell phones, computers, smartphones, the internet, streaming services, satellite TV, my car.
My father bought a TRS-80 in 1979. I learned programming (in Basic) from that. My mother struggles with touch-screens now. Mind you, she is 85, so I have some grace.
An entire generation of Americans had VCR’s that blinked 12:00
Computers/internet. I had been online (on BBSs and early, academic internet) since the ’80s, and I was nominally an adult when the internet became publicly available, so I built a cheap PC with cast-offs for my mum and set it up for her in her apartment.
I still remember being quite some way into explaining how to use an e-mail client, web-browser, search engines, etc when she stopped me and said “Can you stop for a bit? I have a question.” Then she gestured toward the mouse and asked “Why do you keep moving that thing on the desk around?”
digital watches/clocks
Digital watches rofl
VCR clocks. They could never figure out how to set it.
I still don’t know how I, or my parents, were able to program a VCR to record at a certain time. There’s like virtually no feedback to let you know you did anything correctly and when you eventually lost the instructions you just had to guess whether or not to hold a button in or when something should be blinking or not. I might as well have to asked it to record like Alexa and I would have the same chances of it working.
So my parents (90+) struggle with everything wireless: cell phones, WiFi, the little box that lets us watch tv without a cable,… and everything touchscreen: smartphones, those new parking meters, a tablet,…
They are okay with anything built before 1980 really, as long as it has wires and some buttons. A great accomplishment for them actually, considering the learning curve has been steep: from dirt floors, no running water, and a cart pulled by a dog, then going all the way to the things we have today. Their technology skills are impressive, I hope I can be like them.
None. We had no fancy technology. No Atari, no microwave, no cordless phone, no remote for the TV.
I was so proud of my Dad, learning Excel at 60 when he’d never used a computer in his life. I’d created some spreadsheets for him to use in his business and he jumped right into it.
My dad was always up on the latest technology; my mother could not reliably send an e-mail.
We never had a car until 1971 when my dad started working as an illustrator for a ‘Mad Men’-like ad agency. I don’t know how he got his driver’s license. He was a terrible driver (way better at flying glider planes), and he had this ‘sporty’ way of driving (accelerating too quickly and braking too abruptly) which made us four kids in the back sick to the stomach. To add to that, his brand new light-green metallic Ford Taunus 12m reeked of chemicals, probably coming from all of the carcinogenic plastics that were used to upholster the interior.
Because we suddenly had some money (we were kind of poor before he got this job) my parents decided we’d take the car and spend three weeks of holidays in the North of Italy. A 1200 km drive from our home in the Netherlands, scorching heat, hours of traffic coming to a complete halt on the German autobahn, 4 Dutch teenagers on the backseat which was way too small, so I being the youngest, had to sit at the edge of the seat with one leg between the two front seats for the entire trip. My fingernails digging deep into those seats whenever my dad made another ‘sporty’ manoeuvre and almost got us all killed for the 64th time. And that horrible smell was now added to by the smell of unrefrigerated salami sandwiches my mother had prepared for the journey. I remember being relieved whenever my father would light one of his Gladstone cigarettes. (They smelled so good that it took me 40 years and a heart attack to quit after I started smoking at 12 years old.) It was literally hell on wheels. But the holiday in the beautiful Dolomite mountains was so good, and the people were so nice, that we decided to do it all over again the next year. This time, my father, with his ‘sporty’ style of driving ran us into a tree trying his ‘sporty’ abrupt braking on a restaurant’s parking lot paved with gravel. Luckily no one was hurt except my father’s manliness. Which is a small wonder as there were no seat belts in the car. I guess we were packed too tightly to actually move in any direction. It’s been over 50 years ago, my poor dad has passed away since, he never learned to drive well and as he got older and older, I remember him telling me he had to park his car on the side of the road because he had suddenly gone blind in one eye. After he told me that, I told him he should give up driving a car, as he could end up killing innocent people. Of course he didn’t agree, so I stole his drivers license from his wallet. That way he would have to try get a new one, and I was certain at his age and condition, that wasn’t going to happen.
Men from that generation were such a pain in the ass with their sexist macho egos. But I still miss the grumpy asshole.
My dad designed systems for submarines. Nuclear fucking missile submarines.
He never touched a computer until after retirement when his girlfriend made him get one so she could use email. His computation device was literally a slide rule.
Chew on that for a while.
My grandparents had a very difficult time with any digital product.
For example, my grandparents had digital clocks, VCRs and such, and if the power went out, they started blinking 12:00 until I drove over to reset.
I suspect Grandpa could have figured it out, if he really wanted to, but calling me, having me roll over, hang out for a few hours, reset all the devices, was probably preferable to figuring them out himself. I figure, when I am a grandparent, I will have to find some sort of technology blind spot only my grandkids can figure out to finagle time with them too.
LOL, all of it. they aren’t Luddites, but just not tech savvy at ALL.
but cellular phones just broke their brain. “How can it make a call when it’s not plugged into anything?” and being the tech geek I am, I tried to explain in both gross detail and simplistic terms like one would use with a 5-y/o. didn’t matter.
Color TV
Computers, smart phones, smart devices you name it. Mom caught on pretty quick since her job involves computers. Dad is a tradesman and didn’t get a smart phone until early 2010s or so 😂
ATM cards.
my dad told a story about a neighbor got a tv but would not let others watch it because it would use more electricity if more people was watching.
Slide rules
My dad ( born in 1926) was always ahead of me with tech, and bought us our first computer. Had a teletype in the home office in 1970. He never had trouble..
My mom never got the hang of programming a VCR/DVR, TV remote, email, or online shopping until after my dad died when she was in her 70s.
She was a smart woman, and she used a computer all the time for her job as a tax preparer and bookkeeper, but it was always something slightly mysterious and scary.
It was partly that she didn’t have to figure it out because my dad was on top of it, and partly a deliberate choice not to engage because it puffed up my dad’s ego to be the expert in the house. Let the man feel superior, etc.
Don’t downvote me, you heathens – different generation, different ways. They were very much of the “woman’s place is in the home” generation. My dad was never really comfortable with the fact that my mom went back to work and started her own business in her 40s. Get a few drinks in him and he’d admit (to her, not me) that he felt emasculated.
I’m sure the phone will be my “confuzzled old person” thing, eventually. I engage with mine only superficially. Not because I couldn’t do All The Things – I was a software engineer – but because it’s mostly a solution in search of a problem for my lifestyle.
I can’t really think of anything but I think my parents were always ahead of the curve. My dad had a laptop (gigantic Toshiba) for work in the 80s, we had a computer at home at least by early 90s, we had a CD player in 1983. My grandma’s boyfriend had a server in his house and he had to have been born in the late teens/early 20s. My dad would be 80 now and had no trouble with any technology, and my mom is 76 and doesn’t need help, unless my younger brother has to help her reconfigure her pirating system occasionally.
Computers
My folks were pretty hip to new tech when we were growing up. We were the first I knew to have a VHS player, answering machine, microwave oven, etc.. My mom was chatting online & playing computer games before I ever got my first PC.
VCR
Not my parents, but my poor grandma just could not understand how VoIP works.
I moved a few states over in the early 2000s, when most people still had landlines. We got a VoIP phone that ported my wife’s local number to the service, and also gave us a “bonus number” from my old home city, so friends and family could call for free.
Grandma had been “slammed” a couple times (an 80s90s scam where your landline long distance provider would be switched without your consent, often to a shady company that charged outrageous rates for calls), so dad insisted she get rid of long distance altogether. So grandma would call me from the “emergency cell phone” she kept in the trunk of her car, and ask me to call her right back.
No amount of analogies or having my dad or sister explain it to her ever worked. She just COULD NOT understand how calling an Atlanta phone number could ring my phone in North Carolina and it didn’t cost either one of us anything, except minutes out of an embarrassingly large bucket of around 15,000 minutes/month on my home phone plan.
In the “old days”, one had to adjust the color on color TVs to get a good flesh tone on the screen. Color intensity and hue/tint adjustments were required. Initially, it took some skill to make the adjustments.
All of it! They grew up during the depression, and survived! Don’t know if that can happen today with the dependency that goes with new technology.
My parents never understood what I did for work (develop GPUs) even after a factory tour. My mother was a brilliant linguist, she could pick up languages in a day or two just talking to people but I had to help her when she took a college course in BASIC. It made no sense to her.
I was born in 1957. My parents liked new technology. They were the first of their friends and family to buy a color TV. I remember people came over to watch it. Then came the VHS player and they got one. The seller came over and set it up and showed them how it worked. They loved it. They also bought a computer when they first came out for home use.
for a lot of parents it was computers and the internet they could handle tv microwaves and even vcrs but once stuff went digital it was like watching them read a foreign language
emails felt weird to them shopping online felt unsafe and don’t even start on passwords my mom had the same one written on paper taped to the fridge for a decade
every generation hits that wall where tech leaps faster than their habits can catch up smartphones just happened to be yours
apparently birth control. s/
My dad worked for the phone company. He laid fiber optic cables that supported the new tech.
He also got training in the new tech and handled it just fine when he had to.
He liked email and had a cell phone but preferred old school.
Phone answering machine. I bought them one, set it up, there was one button to push to retrieve your calls. For some reason it freaked them out and it mysteriously vanished within a month.
They did eventually use a VCR though. I guess it’s what you considered worthwhile learning.
None, not any. In the 70’s we had a terminal and modem in our house. We were connected to some computer somewhere and my mother would do machine control programming. We had video games as soon as we could, my mom wanted to get a Fairchild channel F. I had an Altair that I built with my Dad, who was an electronic tech.
My Mom couldn’t program the VCR to save her life back in the ‘80s.
My folks were pretty good with tech. And then contactless payments came around…
My parents to their credit adapted to almost all the technology that came out… but they had trouble with the scammers that came with technology. They had a blind spot for liars using new technology. I had to educate them quite a bit and even then they fell for a few scams and almost fell for some really bad ones.
Video recorders. I supported my dad in programming it over the phone (landline) .
When my parents were in their prime, making a polished video production was a very high dollar sophisticated endeavor. Video cameras of any kind were large and expensive. Even magazines.
This means if someone was sitting behind a desk anchoring a news report on a screen, they were part of an elite few, and they were always legit. They were part of a major media outlet that might have a bias but cared about its reputation for accuracy. They could just look and tell this.
Then everything changed. Every 2-bit con and hyper-partisan operative became able to produce slick, high production values “news” reports with whatever bullshit they wanted to peddle accessible streamed. This really screwed up their ability to discern reliable sources.
Remote Controls. To this day they cannot begin to figure out how to use them. It’s been probably 40 years and my Dad still can’t figure out a TV without a push on button or a dial channel selector.
fax
Computers and the internet
It’s more about the culture than the technology. My folks can learn how to use new tech, but they’re often not interested in using it unless it does something practical. VR, for example — Dad thinks it’s interesting, but isn’t interested in finding VR games we could play together when I’m not up there visiting.
Console video games. Way back with intellevision and Atari to the ming boggling NES. They tried them but it was like their motor skills left them when trying to coordinate a joystick/d-pad and button.
They also never really saw the point. “OK, you get to the end of the level, and then what? Another level? Why?”
They watched movies for fun but couldn’t seem to grasp the fun of video games (games happen on a board or with cards!)
Seatbelts.
Computers, smart phones.
My Dad told me about flat screens being developed in the 60’s – Signal Corp was already working with tech to accomplish it. Not much got past him.
Now I find old tech is passing out of the public conversations – nobody knows about drum brakes, for instance, I always got those old guys walking in the door needing front drum shoes or asking about Left Hand Dodge lug studs. And a lot of them are flathead fans.
My mother was bowled over when I showed her my word processor (a few years before an actual computer). And both my parents had trouble grasping the fact that telephones had three letters per number on the dial, so if you wanted to use “PErshing 5” for the exchange, it was the same as 735. Even when I showed them, it didn’t make sense to them.
VCRs. Every time I visited them I would reset the clock that was sadly flashing for all to see.
Synthesizers/electronically created music. My dad was a big music fan, but just couldn’t wrap his head around this. When I told him that every instrument he heard in some songs came from a keyboard, he would give me an odd look and turn away.
My dad was born in 1916, my mom in 1921. It seemed like they adapted well until about age 50, but after that, not so much.
Dad passed in 1975, so he never really had to deal with any massive changes (he kept his jazz LPs and didn’t switch to tapes, but he loved the new color TVs). However, he made it clear that in his opinion, automotive design had gone in the crapper. After he got rid of our ’54 Chevy Bel Air in 1969, he looked for a new car, but never found one that pleased him.
Mom lived on till 1994, and thus was confronted with things like microwaves (which she deemed possibly unsafe) and computerized cash registers (at her job). I recall she was quite scared about the registers, since she felt if she couldn’t ‘master’ them she’d lose her job. But her fears were unfounded; she in fact adapted so fast, she was tasked with helping other sales associates who couldn’t quite ‘get’ the new system.
Debit cards. My mom still uses cash to this day.
My grandmother could never understand how my digital watch knew which days have 30 days in which had 31. I tried to explain to her that it was just an embedded digital calendar but I don’t think she grasped the idea.
Everything. When I was born, there were telephones and televisions and radios, and that was it.
The right click, the double click, the drag and drop
My parents were born in the 1930s. They weren’t great with VCRs. That’s about it.
My father was programming computers in the 1950s. While my mother wasn’t initially as tech savvy as he, she was a very handy person and could pick up using pretty much anything very quickly. (She liked iOS more than android)
My mother loved getting new tech even though she rarely understood how to use it. Computers, tablets, mobile phones, smart TV’s, remotes, etc.. she always believed that next new model would be easier for her to use.
This didn’t happen with my family. Both my parents had tech/computer related jobs in the 1960’s, and while they are far from being early adopters, they didn’t have a hard time understanding anything. My mom was using e-mail to communicate with me overseas, back when international phone calls were dicey and expensive and e-mail was so new most people didn’t know what it was. She even sent me a couple of pictures as attachments, which was a grand feat back before digital cameras and drag-and-drop mail clients.
What continues to infuriate them is how companies continually make arbitrary changes in features, functionality, and UI, with zero warning and no way to disable the changes or return to a version that works well. And they’re right. Microsoft (Windows and Office) and Google (Android) are among the worst.
Without exception, when I have to go over and solve a technical issue, it turns out to be the fault of some idiot who designed the feature, not any lack of understanding by my parents. The most recent one had to do with how the dialog for entering a wifi password worked.
Geezus really everything after TV and record players, VCRs, PCs, gaming consoles, CDs, DVDs, Tevo, the INTERNET, cell phones, smart phones…
Pong
Programming the VCR. We had flashing blue lines where the clock should be for years.
If you’re in your late 20s, I’m assuming your parents are 25 to 30 years older, so basically MY age. If they have trouble with smart phones and social media I have no idea where they were hiding, because smart phones started happening in the 1990s.
My parents are of the Silent Gen, born in 1940.
My father died young, in 1986. Computers EXISTED but he couldn’t fathom converting his vet practice record system to use the tech that was then available, but he understood it would probably be an obvious step for a new practice before very long (and, indeed, I think it probably was by the mid to late 1990s).
My mom didn’t really have a computer until the late 1990s. She worked as a physical therapist, so she DID use the light-pen, terminal-based charting system her hospital adopted in the 1980s, but she didn’t have much use for one at home until she married my stepfather and took to using Quicken and Quickbooks.
I feel like, for many folks, Quicken/Quickbooks was the gateway drug, because once the penny dropped on how powerful that was vs. paper ledgers, well, it was all over.
My stepfather had no use for one PERSONALLY but had his medical practice records computerized sometime in the late 80s or early 90s at the urging of his business manager. It was a good move, because it made billing easier, but he personally didn’t have to touch it. OTOH, once he RETIRED he reached out to me for help on getting a computer he’d use to scan his (enormous) photo archive to share with his daughters and their families.
Honestly, this guy — born in 1934 — took to it like water. He’d have questions for me, but he’d very politely kinda request an appointment with me to go over them. And when we’d get on a call (or, later, a GoToMeeting session), he’d have his questions ready to go, along with what things he’d tried and how he’d sought to solve the problem himself without involving me.
He’s gone now, and one of the reasons I miss him was his curiosity and mental acuity when solving a problem.
My father worked for Texas Instruments in the 70’s. I completely missed being able to one-up him in technology. He brought home our first home PC about 1976 and insisted I learn to use it. I hated it until I figured out I could cut and paste entire paragraphs without having to load a new sheet of paper into my Brother typewriter and start over.
In my day it was a running joke that our elders couldn’t figure out how to get the blinking “12:00” to stop on their VCRs.
CDs
Streaming (Netflix, YouTube, etc)
My dad and late mom (Generation Jones) never have had anything streaming. They never even got on the cable TV train. They were/are happy to make due with whatever is on the 3-5 major networks. My dad even now with a smart TV and the gazillion of free channel on it prefers his CRT in the other room and its 1980s screen quality. He doesn’t even want my passwords to watch the shows he likes.
Honestly, nothing! I’m in my 50s and my mother’s almost 80, and she has always been at least as clued-in to technology as I am. She started using computers around the same time I did, in the early 90s. She had a cell phone a few years before I did. These days, she runs her life via cell phone, streams content on her smart tv, and uses her Apple watch for things like adjusting her hearing aids and monitoring for falls. Come to think of it, my 101-year-old grandmother does much of the same. (Though they DO need to have a grandkid talk them through a new or complicated process once in a while when they encounter it for the first time. But no shame in that, I say.)
Touch screens
I once walked in my dad’s home and the 3 hotdogs he was cooking in the new digital microwave had 44 minutes left to cook they already looked like shriveled brown mummy fingers.
None that I saw. My mother took computer classes in the mid-late 1980s, they were able to figure out the VCR, no problems.
When I was a kid, they were younger than I am now and I don’t think I’m currently too old to learn things, and they certainly weren’t, either.
Understood but did NOT adapt to bombs falling on our town.
The left turn blinker.
TBH nothing. Dad was a navy fighter pilot way back when any new tech meant living longer. His squad was the first to get night flight, and the first to get supersonic. He got a computer before i did and was an early kpro backer. He was investing in hemp in the 80s. He was good with vhs tapes and reset every clock before breakfast. He had a garmin because he hunted areas with no cell coverage. Runs in the family, his dad was a huge promoter of pasteurization in the 30s when it started being a little more widespread.
Bar codes to programme the VCR
When I was young, if you heard nothing but impatient swearing coming from my dad in another room, you knew he was trying to set up to record an upcoming show on the VCR.
The multi-function remote with the switch at the top for TV/VCR/Cable.
Computers. My mother never so much turned one on or touched a mouse. She never saw a cell phone in person, not because she passed before they were common, but because I didn’t have any use for one. I finally got an unsold older one for $30 around eight years ago.
I’m 81. Actually, I remember when we got the first T.V. in our neighborhood. My father had to go up on the roof and turn the antenna while we shouted to him that the signal was better.
I can’t really think of anything. I’m 50 and I feel like a lot of the really big tech changes came at a time when they weren’t so old as to not get it…and really, my dad was a tech dork since forever. I remember being a kid in the mid 80s and he’d bring his behemoth of a computer home from work to fuck around with.
My mother was a business teacher and seamlessly transitioned from typewriters to personal computers with word processors. But my father never even attempted to use a computer. It was a shame because he was good in accounting and math but just wasn’t interested in PCs.
All of it, my 90+ year old mother has a cell phone, uses the internet, social media, X, etc.
Computers and then the internet and I’m talking dial-up here. We got our first pc in 1987 and while my mother was always happy to have me look stuff up for her, she refused to learn how to use one for herself. FYI, I’m 73 and I still find many people of my generation who won’t use computers or tablets and as to mobile phones–they know how to make a call and that’s it.
Computers for me. Changing programs at work was always somewhat traumatic. I’m admittedly a bit of a Luddite. I was laid off and retired at 60. My wife and I still use three controllers to work the tv and multi media. I have no idea what most of the buttons are for. Same with the buttons in my Subaru. I got my first cell phone three years ago primarily for emergencies. I have just over three hours of phone calls in that period. I just like things to be simple and uncomplicated. I manage pretty well regardless. Works for me.
I don’t know if it counts as not understanding, but when video came out, they bought a Beta player.
My father got into Cobol programming in the 1960s and kept telling me how cool it was, how it was the thing of the future, and if I learned too I’d always have a job.
He was right, of course, but I was stubborn. I’m comfortable with tech now but didn’t learn much until I went online in the 1990s.
So maybe I was the person who had a hard time understanding and my father was the smart one.
Using a mouse while on the computer.
My mom (rip) never had an issue with anything except her answering machine. Only thing I had to help her with
All of it. I am talking TV remote controls (remember sitting by the TV as a kid and turning the knob and going through the 13 channels until we landed on a show), answering machines, cordless phones, VCRs, video games, my dad looked on the internet once and when he shuffled off this mortal coil, I was still putting numbers in his cell phone for him, a flip phone that he never answered.
Fuel injection around 1982 or 83. Dad grew up working carbureted engines his whole life and getting a gas car with fuel injection blew his mind. He refused to learn it.
VCRs
I could program them, my parents could not.
Home computers. Scrolling with a mouse.
There was an adjustment period for my parents but they did pretty well over all with the new technology.
My father was in IT since the 70s, so it was an adjustment to go from a mainframe to a PC. My mom had never used a computer until she learned about online shopping.
My dad never wanted to deal with a smart phone and had an old flip phone until he died. We transitioning my mom to a smart phone when he was sick and she’s adjusted well to it. She’s on it all the time now.
My mother got a digital watch years ago, and she had to get her 10 yo grandson to set it for her
Online banking, they thought paying bills online was some scam and would still drive to the bank just to pay in person 🤣
Most everything from VVRs onward, honestly…
VCR
My mom easily moved in to computers and cell phones. My mother in law, on the other hand, could never even grasp how to dial a cell phone when they’re just smaller versions of her landline. Maybe it was the button that you actually had to push to answer that befuddled her. But she just couldn’t.
My grandpa was a sales rep for Amana, who built one of the first microwave ovens, the RadarRange. He refused to have one in his house.
My mom – a singer in the Sweet Adelines and many classical church and regional choirs – would listen to some of our new music and at the end she would give out a very loud, gutteral UGHHH sound. “That’s all those caterwallin’ songs end up.” Probably inspired by WAR UGH, what is it good for..
Oh, and my dad was an engineer at Motorola. He invented one of the chips that went into the first HBO set-top boxes. He refused to let us have one in the home. Nothing but filthy smut on that channel, not for children.
Stereo systems were a pain in the butt to set up. While they were the best in the late 70s, the copper wire cables needed to be wrapped around a metal pin and pressed with a knob. The difficult part was that there were a lot of knobs for adding more speakers and accessories and the markings were not always clear. Our system had an amp, EQ, record player and a cassette deck and if you didn’t know what you were doing, you would be sitting on the floor behind the system with a flashlight and the manual if the stereo even had one and yelling profanities.
I was the kid holding the flashlight while my dad tried connecting the cables correctly so there wasn’t buzzing or crackling sounds or having to hit a speaker for it to come back on.
Yeah, basically everything electronic. When I was little we had television and cable TV and land lines. That was it.
By the time I finished high school we had cellphones, personal computers, broadband internet, and wifi had just come out.
If I could just get the light on the videotape machine to stop blinking…
None, really. In fact, they were ahead of the curve on all of it. I’m 67, and my parents were using computers and my mother had implemented them into her business about the same time that I got my first computers in the late 1970’s/early ’80’s. My father in law was computer savvy too. My MIL not so much, but she knew how to use them; she just didn’t like to.