Technology

Oh, vital. Vital. It’s really sad when I meet people my age who don’t want to know anything about the internet. I say it’s the best friend you can have. It might be that you’re incapacitated in some form, at least you’ve got connection to the world. And fortunately my ex-father-in-law was a pharmacist so he’s always used a computer and he’s now 96, still driving, and he has an amazing life because he can still connect with his sister and some family who live in the US. And if I didn’t have that technology I’d still be home waiting for Mr Shining Knight to knock on my door which is not going to happen. So I’m really, really happy I’m living today and have that access. I’ve always used a computer because of my work and now I do provide short stay accommodation, I’m on the computer an awful lot. So yeah, I’m glad I live for the time I live, in this era.

Well as soon as it comes on the market I wasn’t following it up. I didn’t understand it. It was out of my depth, and then I thought hell, I’ve bought a computer. I’ve never used a keyboard in my life before until I bought the computer. Well I’m as happy as a pig in mud now playing with the computer. Researching, I didn’t realise there was so much on a computer and by researching this, want to find anything you just Google in, put a word in, and it will tell you. It’s amazing, but you can’t get that down the street. You can’t get it from the club. You can ask Tom, Dick and Harry, wouldn’t have a clue. Two seconds on the computer and you’ve got it, but then it’ll come up, it might be a thousand thingos that could explain, which one you want to read and which one you want to get involved in you know. It’s endless, that is good, it opened my eyes. I was very impressed and now I’ve got two computers you can see that.

Well then the other big thing that bugs me a little bit is being computer literate. Now I’ve written a few books now in my retirement and I’ve been able to use my simple laptop but every other aspect of my life seems to require that I’m more expert on the computer. For example, I think it’s a disgrace that the new telephone book, the print is so small that one needs a magnifying glass so to get a phone number, everyone says to me “Well, use the computer, you just key in White Pages and follow the steps”. The other thing is that, for example, the telephone. Now to pay for my mobile telephone, I’m told to key in a number and follow the steps and make sure that I’ve got my credit card ready. Well I’ve tried to do that and I can’t seem to make it work, almost everything seems to require a skill that one would think I have as a microbiologist, as a scientist I learnt to be very practical, but then we have an iPad and it doesn’t seem to work the way I’d like it to. My camera, I have a new camera, but that camera has to be recharged, I have to take out a little chip, I can’t anymore get prints, they go on disks, everything seems to be a little more difficult than it used to be and I’m finding that quite tricky. I’ve got all the aids, for example my cleaning upstairs, the carpets up there, I’ve got a robot that takes off every second day but even that, to change the days and the time is difficult.

So that’s the pace of technology?

Yes.

But then I guess is it more difficult to keep up with technology as you get older or is it just that –

I think it’s more difficult to keep up with it. Everything seems to be moving very fast and almost anything I do now is involving new technology.

So why is it more difficult in your older years to keep up with that than it was in your younger years?

Well to begin with, I guess it’s the size of things on say a smart phone or an iPod, the writing is smaller so one needs glasses or a magnifying glass. I have a reading thing on a stand with a light and a magnifying glass that I can – it just seems all technology now is difficult for older people.

I use the computer and I email friends everywhere but I don’t want to be bothered with the social media so I don’t Twitter and I don’t Facebook and I refuse to carry a mobile phone because whatever I’m doing at the moment is what I’m doing and I don’t need gadgets. I’d just rather be able to hear things and see things and deal with people. So I could learn, of course I could learn but I put those aside and just stick to the computer.

It enables me in an enormous way to do all of those things, because for example, if I want to know something, I go to the computer and I Google it. Years ago, what option would I have? I’d have to run to this library and that library. I still did it, or went to encyclopaedias, but I didn’t do it to the extent that I do it today, because it’s so much easier just to do research and you don’t have to be an academic now to do some research and find out various things that interest you if you’ve got access to the internet. I’d recommend it for anyone. I couldn’t live without it. Well, I could. I know I could, but I wouldn’t want to live without it.

You know, I would hate – just coming back to the health thing – I would hate now not to be able to use a Google search engine to look at, to find out as much as I can about what might be wrong with me. And that’s not about self-diagnosis or taking over doctors, it’s having as much knowledge as you can. I would – I mean, that is so rich in what it can provide. Yeah, I can’t imagine not being able to do that sort of stuff.

Look, if I looked – I’ll make the comparison between my parents’ illnesses and decline which, I mean they lived to their mid-80s and both of them had – well, my father had a long decline, my mother a shorter. And I wasn’t using Google then, and I don’t think, you know, it’s nearly 20 years since my father died and I think if it had been available then, it would have helped me enormously to understand what was going on. And with my mother more recent, you know, in the last 15 years or so. I think it would have aided me enormously because doctors don’t have time to talk to you, and they’re filtering information anyway, and the ageing parent is their patient, not you, and all of those things come into play. So I can remember that. And with my husband’s health issues, it’s irritated him terribly, but it’s helped me that whenever issues emerge I go and have a look at what’s going on and try and understand it. My way of dealing with the world is by trying to understand things. Other people, they don’t feel the same need and that’s okay. They’re happy to go to their GP and be told here’s your blood pressure pills. And I’ve got high blood pressure, but I want to know what’s causing that, and what’s the diagnosis and the prognosis and all that. So I can’t imagine going further into ageing without being able to have access to that information.

I don’t believe – I, myself, no I don’t believe in internet banking. I won’t have anything to do with it – don’t ask me why I just don’t trust anyone – well they can, they say they can’t but they can get into it. You’ve got young kids breaking into the secret codes in America and England, the Navy and the Air Force, all their secrets, all the prohibited stuff, they get into that. So they’re going to get into your banking aren’t they? Yeah, they get ripped off, and you get silly buggers falling for these scams, “Oh, send me $100 and we’ll send you the results of the lottery” or “You’ve won a million dollars or something”, people are gullible, gullible. They send the money, well Jesus. You know, you’ve seen it. How gullible can you get? You’ve just got to be careful, you’ve got to think, think. Is this a scam? No, don’t touch. In God we trust, all others cash.

I’m not very good at technology, I don’t like it much which I think is one of the reasons why I’m not very good at it. I do not like to talk to machines, even on the telephone I get a bit ropable when it says press this button or that button or the other button and you simply get another machine. That is purely a personal attitude perhaps of mine. But I think there are a lot of people who keep up with technology, I do up to a point. But I have a feeling it adds to the feeling of isolation.

Okay, that’s very interesting. So you mean not keeping up adds to the feeling of isolation?

Not keeping up and not liking the idea of either using the machine or having emails sent to you and things like that. Or even instead of picking up a phone sending an email, I’d much rather talk to somebody on the phone.

What’s happening around me, the whole issue of Twitter and Facebook and that sort of interchange, it’s a different form of communication, it’s a different form of society and unless you can find a place for yourself as a senior person, still wanting to be in the mix of things, you can be left behind.

Well yeah most of us are not really [too] old to do that [learn]. We still do that, you know. But kids, like nowadays they’re really clever on technologies. They’re really fantastic all the kids. But we still learn. Most of us still learn. While we’re getting old we still learn. I’m not too old to learn.

Well just go and buy a computer. You don’t have to spend big money, you can go and buy one $300 or $400 and learn it. You can get free tuition from public libraries in Darwin, we’re lucky there. I spent an hour a week or two hours, two different sessions and you can go to different libraries in the week, go to three libraries in a week and learn; that’s what I done. I went to the library and they taught me. It was free and good and I thought this is all right, until they said, “No, we can’t show you anymore. Your basics are good. Go home and play with it now. We can’t teach you anything more”. The basics, that’s all we’re interested in. When you’ve got your basics you can learn from there.

So it’s not harder to learn these things?

Well it was hard for me because I didn’t have a clue. I’d never used a keyboard before. I don’t use two hands, but I’d like to be able to type with both hands but you know I just can’t. I’m too old to learn that anyway. I wouldn’t even try. I’m happy with my one finger, I’m in no hurry.

Do you really believe that, that you’re too old to learn that?

Only to type because it’d take me six months or 12 months to learn how to do it properly and fast and efficient, but I’ve got time on my hands so I’m happy just with one finger. I get by. You’d be surprised how quick you can get if you’re doing it all the time, you can get very quick. Not as quick as that, but you get by. Sometimes they have a go at me from Cambodia, “You’re very slow Earl”, I say yeah, I know! Cos they use – No, we’ll get by, we’ll be all right, no hurry, okay.

I’ve only just gone onto Facebook and I’m having difficulty. Because it’s on the mobile phone, it’s – there’s some things I can’t quite get my head around yet. I’m going to have to get Dummies for Facebook and read up on that. But I do have an idea of where I can go for assistance when I get stuck. I can go to one of the telcos or get the grandchildren or the children to help me out.

Robin: The problem I have with technology is as my boys grew up, the eldest boy he didn’t grow up with a computer. The middle one, from quite a young age, he was with a computer, and the youngest one, he grew up with a computer. And as they got older, whenever I had a problem

Lyn: They’d solve it.

Robin: I was so busy I’d just ask them to solve it, and they would solve it like that for me. And of course, when they solve it you don’t know what they’ve done to solve it. When it happens the next time, you know, you don’t know what to do. You have to ask them to solve it again. When my youngest was working in Prague, once I had to phone him, and luckily he took control from Prague of my computer and he fixed it up for me. But now that they’ve left altogether, you know, I’m having to take a bit more responsibility again and learn all these things.

Lyn: You had to ask your son yesterday. Phone him, on the phone, “This is not.”

Robin: Well, because of renovations the projector had to come down, the screen had to come down and I bought a new screen, put the projector up. I was getting sound but no picture. So my middle son, he’s an ace on hi-fi. He’s got a mathematics degree and he loves hi-fi, and he’s not working so I phoned him in Melbourne, and he went through everything. I put the computer on Skype, I took it around so he could have a look at the back of the [laughing]. I said, “I think they’re not done properly”, you know. That was what I was worried about, and he said, “No Dad, you’ve done the right thing. It’s all wired up properly”, and eventually we nailed it, you know, what the problem was. So yeah, that’s the thing now, you end up dependent on your kids for this new technology knowledge.