Age-related alienation from the rest of the human race
Posted 07-16-2017 at 08:30 PM by Blondebaerde
Quote:
Originally Posted by Escort Rider
Well, maybe "age-related" is not entirely accurate, because there are people my age (73) and older who do not suffer from this. But to a certain extent it is age-related in the sense that if I were 30 or 40 years younger I would have automatically mastered certain rudimentary things that now trouble me.
About an hour ago I bought a Garmin GPS car unit from Best Buy. The salesman assured me there was an owners' manual in the box, but the son-of-a-***** was lying through his teeth. I got the thing plugged into the cigarette lighter in the parking lot, and I succeeded in getting my home address entered during stops at red lights. But it remains a mystery how I am supposed to get the unit to register that address as "home". I will play with it some more, of course, and I will also ask a young guy who is a member of our HOA board of directors for help. This is so humiliating. Every one else on the planet has had long experience using a GPS in his car except me. This is probably prima fasciae evidence of profound mental retardation, but in any case it's no fun.
I am simply twenty or more years behind the human race, or perhaps a few hundred years behind if you stop to consider that differential calculus was developed by Sir Isaac Newton (and independently by Leibnitz about the same time) a very, very long time ago. A math Ph.D. once explained to me that mathematics begins with calculus. I never even reaching the starting line. (Not that everyone is supposed to be a mathematician, but I had trouble even before getting to the starting line. Pathetic beyond all imagining, just like today's experience).
I cannot imagine such a backwards way to do business as to not include an owners' manual with a product and telling people they have to go online to get it. The world is an alien and hostile and incomprehensible place for people like me. It's a damn good thing I decided not to have children - I would feel sorry for anyone to whom I had passed on these genes.
About an hour ago I bought a Garmin GPS car unit from Best Buy. The salesman assured me there was an owners' manual in the box, but the son-of-a-***** was lying through his teeth. I got the thing plugged into the cigarette lighter in the parking lot, and I succeeded in getting my home address entered during stops at red lights. But it remains a mystery how I am supposed to get the unit to register that address as "home". I will play with it some more, of course, and I will also ask a young guy who is a member of our HOA board of directors for help. This is so humiliating. Every one else on the planet has had long experience using a GPS in his car except me. This is probably prima fasciae evidence of profound mental retardation, but in any case it's no fun.
I am simply twenty or more years behind the human race, or perhaps a few hundred years behind if you stop to consider that differential calculus was developed by Sir Isaac Newton (and independently by Leibnitz about the same time) a very, very long time ago. A math Ph.D. once explained to me that mathematics begins with calculus. I never even reaching the starting line. (Not that everyone is supposed to be a mathematician, but I had trouble even before getting to the starting line. Pathetic beyond all imagining, just like today's experience).
I cannot imagine such a backwards way to do business as to not include an owners' manual with a product and telling people they have to go online to get it. The world is an alien and hostile and incomprehensible place for people like me. It's a damn good thing I decided not to have children - I would feel sorry for anyone to whom I had passed on these genes.
Will provide analogy to OP's dillema:
- "Why is there no instruction manual in the box??" A: because it's a waste of paper, and does not allow for any addenda to be added to the manual by Garmin (or whoever it is). Also, I haven't not looked for a manual online in maybe five years. Nor has anyone else, probably.
My dad: "How do I burn CDs?" (think Y2K). A: install a program that will do that. "How do I install a program", as he hunted around for floppy disks or punch cards...
Years later:
Dad: "I got a new comptuer, there is no CD burner!" A: number one, we've moved onto DVDs. Number two, they're mostly obsolete now, too, btw. Number three, just organize them online, share the links to individual photos or folders with others, via email or Messenger. Dad: "...and where do my photos live online, then? I didn't put them there!" ...and so it goes.
I can see this happening to me, a reasonably smart guy, if I go all hermit-mode in about ten years as I'm tempted to do. Stay off the grid for about ten years, I'll reemerge into what amounts to an alien society. Keep up or be steamrolled.
My dad passed away before I had a chance to tell him that on-premises applications were on rapid decline, we'd all sooner vs. later be moving to Office 365, Google apps, Amazon and Apple Cloud, all that. He'd have never got it, and probably remained happy burning CDs all day and mailing them through the "Post Office" (= Dead Letter) to his brothers and sisters.
...Who all also have since died of old age, God bless them all. Time moves on, people.
