Operating at 33 1/3

I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to technology I have a very hard time keeping up. I am definitely behind the times. My husband and I joke that we are both operating at 33 1/3 in an iPod world, though in his case, it’s more like operating at 78.

I see the television commercials for all these various devices, you can’t really call them cell phones because that is only one small function that they do. They boast that there is an App for this and an App for that and I don’t have the foggiest notion of what they’re talking about because I obviously don’t have an App for that.

The commercials show someone’s fingers moving from one App to the next with ease, but I really don’t believe it’s that simple, at least not for me. I do have a cell phone, but all I can do is make and receive calls and I do that so rarely that I have to re-educate myself whenever I use it.

I guess I could do text messaging, but I never have. I never have, in part, because I don’t know how and probably never will. I don’t think I’m missing all that much.

I do have a computer and most of the time I can get it to do what I need it to do and that’s pretty limited. I check my e-mail and my bank account. Once in awhile I visit eBay and I use the word processing program and that’s about it. I have never checked out Facebook or YouTube or Twitter and have no interest to do so.

I know I’m very much behind the times and I’m OK with that. However, a headline in the paper the other day made me feel like I’m not just a little behind the times, but 40 years late.

The headline said, “Internet at 40: Midlife Crisis!” How could it be 40 years since the introduction of the Internet? I never even heard of it until 10 or 15 years ago. For God’s sake, I haven’t been living under a rock all these years. You would have thought I would have heard something about the Internet long before I did.

Reading the article put my technologically stifled mind at ease because it turns out that no one else except the inventors had heard of the Internet either.

On Sept. 2, 1969, Len Kleinrock and a team of 20 connected two bulky computers together with a 15-foot cable that allowed the machines to share information. In essence this was the first time computers could communicate with each other; it was the rudimentary beginning of the Internet.

This clever invention led to e-mail on a limited basis in the 1970s, and by the 1980s the addressing system of .com and.org came into being. Then in the 1990s a British physicist invented the Web, then came American On Line followed by a host of Internet Service Providers and then came my knowledge that any of this existed.

So, I was not nearly as behind the times as I thought. I don’t understand how any of it works nor do I care to, but at least I know about it.

I guess this era of instant communication has its merits. People take pictures on their cell phones of events as they are happening, send them to their computers, e-mail them to friends and family, post them on YouTube and text the details all over the place.

It’s an amazing technological world made even more amazing by the invention of the Internet 40 years ago.

For me, however, most of it is just passing me by. I’d rather use the telephone mounted on the wall in my kitchen than use my cell phone. I’d rather send a letter or a card than e-mail or text someone. And I’d rather read a good book than spend my time surfing the World Wide- Web. If that puts me way behind the times, well so be it. The Way I see it that’s a time slot I’m pretty comfortable to be in.

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