Some of the ideas I bring you each week start as questions from subscribers just like you. Today, I bring you one example.

Lucas writes as follows:

“I work in an area with a lot of people your age or older, and tech-wise, it can get rather frustrating. It’s therefore very refreshing to find myself, as a fairly tech-savvy millennial, being faced with you as my first result when looking into the question of transcribing cursive in the age of AI. Thank you very much.”

Here is my response:

Lucas, thanks so much for the kind words. The analogy I like to use is that the change from a pencil/paper world of generations past to our present digital age is like standing on the dock and placing one foot in the boat.

Everything is fine. Then the boat moves just a little. You’re still OK. The boat moves from the dock just a little more, and now we start to sweat.

We’ve got to decide to stay on the dock or get in the boat, or we’re soon going to be in the water. Too many of those in my generation have found themselves in the water and looking for a life preserver. Stayning relevant is a change, but is one well worth undertaking.

I am one of the lucky ones who realized early on what technology could do and did my best to spend the time learning things that later save vast amounts of time in execution.

The long history of human evolution shows that when faced with circumstances, we humans come up with procedures to handle those circumstances. That’s allowed this species to thrive. But so often, especially with technology, our circumstances change, but our procedures stay the same. We wind up working harder, doing double duty, and complaining about life being so hard.

The message to my generation and beyond

I would say this to those of my generation and beyond: When you were young, you did the best you could with what you had, right? You used carbon paper so you didn’t have to type the exact same page twice, for example. You always made sure you had a dime in your pocket so you could make a phone call. You learned how to use a slide rule because that was the tool that made complex calculations easy. What happened to you? When did you stop doing that? When did you stop doing the best you could with what you had when what you have is so much more?

Many are at that age when traveling to see grandchildren or great-grandchildren is difficult. But with a few clicks of a mouse, we can have those conversations anytime we wish. Who knows what will be possible when you reach this point in your life.

When I was a young man, President Reagan occupied the Oval Office. At the presentation ceremony for the National Medals of Science and Technology in 1988, he told a story of a time 20 years before when, as governor of California, the student body presidents of the nine state universities of California demanded a meeting with him.

Ronald Regan

The spokesman for the group began: “Governor, it’s impossible for you to understand your own children. Your generation didn’t live at a time of instant electronics, of communication, of space travel, of journeys to the Moon, and jets.”

Reagan listened attentively and responded, “You’re absolutely right, we didn’t have those things when we were growing up…We invented them.”

Those of my generation who have let three decades of technological innovation pass them by should realize the guy who made all of this possible is someone their age who, as a young man, had a vision that changed the world when he wrote the operating system that has powered most of the world’s computers ever since. They don’t need to waste another day. They are lucky to have you as someone to help them step into the boat and live a life that is so much easier.

That was my answer

So that was my answer to Lucas. And the tools really have gotten easier over the years. Anybody old enough to remember the DOS commands we used to use? The Macintosh computer and the advent of Windows on the Microsoft side changed all of that. Complex commands you had to type correctly, character for character, were replaced by what looked like little pieces of paper that you could drag into what looked like little file folders. But you can’t experience it if you’re standing on the dock and watching the boat set sail. Come along for the journey.

Your call to action

If you’re in my generation, you’ve got a wealth of background knowledge to build on, and you have mastered skills much tougher than modern technology, believe me. Go find yourself a Lucas and learn. And if you are younger and don’t remember a day when there wasn’t something called a Google search, go find somebody whose hair is this color and introduce them to an easier way to work and play. After all, if it weren’t for the guys of my generation—Steve Jobs and Bill Gates—you wouldn’t have a computer. And while you’re helping them out, you can even ask them, “What’s that carbon paper of which he speaks?“

“The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life.”
– Bill Gates

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