Member-only story
I was in my 30s during the era describes. It’s like comparing the Flintstones to the Jetsons cartoons I watched on Saturday mornings in the late 1960s. Really dating myself here!
I remember the decades I worked at Statistics Canada, before there was even a computer on every desk! My first home computer was an Atari in the early 1980s. Apart from creating documents, I don’t remember what I did with it. I might have played a few games on it.
I remember the days before mouse-clicking and my first “Hello World” webpage created with Notepad and Netscape (think Chrome or Firefox). When I worked for the 1986 Census, 150 employees shared the only two computers on the floor. Before I retired in 2014, a power failure meant nobody could do any work.
I appreciate technology and what it’s done for my life as a visually impaired person. E-books don’t get any heavier when you increase the font size. It’s difficult for me to do more than make calls and write text messages on my phone. Using it for email is not an option. I startle easily and dislike sudden noise, so I’ve disabled the notifications on my phone. I rarely have it in my hands more than five times during any given day. I prefer using a tablet, but it’s not always in the same room with me either.
Technology is my tool and sometimes my toy. It’s not my constant companion. I have so many other things to do. I’m not into social media, except to occasionally share stuff from other sites. The closest thing to social media that I regularly engage with is Medium.
