Seen several articles recently about older people not being very competent with the latest technology. Maybe that should be 'familiar' rather than 'competent'. I'm not a believer in using satnavs, ipods, blackberries and the like. I can't say they're rubbish or anything because I've never tried them - I've just never felt the need or desire to own them. I am sitting here using a laptop to blog, something I certainly wouldn't have done a few years ago for much the same reasons I don't have a satnav now.
As technologies become more mature, I feel they improve and get easier to use. At the same time, they can also get more sophisticated and more difficult to make full use of. I've got a relatively simple mobile phone with camera and mp3 player, but I only ever use it as a phone. If I need to take a photo it's a case of searching through the menus, despite the fact I know there's a quick button on the outside somewhere or direct access to the camera function. I'm not entirely sure, but I would imagine over time the manufacturers will standardise how controls like this are presented, just as the major controls on a motor car were standardised quite early in automotive history. It's still often a problem finding the fog light switch!
A major reason I don't rush out and buy new technology is the rate of change. Buy the latest gizmo and it's going to be superseded within a few months. Give it a couple of years to prove itself - the design will settle down to include all the useful functions and the price will come down and it will become apparent if the thing is actually useful.
A major gripe with technology is the way many manufacturers change things to no real purpose other than to make older versions obsolete. Microsoft keeps changing the interfaces on its software, 2007 being a complete break with previous designs, rendering a lot of knowledge redundant and requiring re-learning. Even worse is the recent operating systems not being backwardly compatible. Much older software doesn't work on the new operating systems, buying new versions is, to say the least, an annoyingly expensive business. While I understand that at some point the technology has to radically change to make use of the latest developments, it is surely not beyond these mighty companies ability to include a simulator program to allow the powerful new generation PC's to (even very inefficiently) simulate the old operating systems and allow the obsolete software to work.
And then there are the web providers who keep tinkering with their offerings. Their 'improvements' are often not communicated to the user community very well, they can affect the security of the user, they require effort to relearn the changed functionality, and they often don't improve the user experience anyway.
Maybe I need to stay out of these area fr a decade rather than just a couple of years - wait 'til it all gets properly stable!
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