Author: Kate Lupo
This weekend, my boyfriend's mom came to visit. At lunch, she extracted her large, outdated cell phone from within her backpack.
"Oh God," she said, with panic in her voice. "A voicemail from your father! I thought I checked my messages 20 minutes ago! I better send him a text message."
Though we told her not to worry, my boyfriend's mom simply could not continue eating without solving the problem at hand. Brow furrowed in concentration, she opened up the "messages" icon on the phone screen and began to compose the text message by awkwardly jabbing her fingers at the keypad. Wearing sympathetic smiles, my boyfriend and I observed the poor woman compose her three-word text message with great difficulty.
Watching our mothers struggle to catch up with 21st-century technology is nothing new. In fact, many kids in our generation often experience the hilarious showdowns between mothers and electronics - epic contests that generally involve flinching, heart grabbing, screams and sighs of frustration.
At first, observing our helpless mothers attempt to type text messages or insert an attachment into an e-mail is often quite comical, but in the end, it is also undeniably sad. Leaving behind their old-fashioned communication methods, mothers continually face a frustrating and humiliating battle to keep up with the overwhelming pace of technology innovation.
So why, exactly, are moms so "technologically-challenged"?
When the tech boom happened in the 1990s, many women had already made the decision to be "stay-at-home moms." In the home, women were too busy caring for their children to become engaged with new technology. Cell phones, computers and e-mail were not as intrinsically connected with family communication as they are today. Thus, many mothers acquired an aversion to electronics, leaving it to their husbands to solve technological problems with the TV. or telephone.
Meanwhile, fathers became well-versed with the computers they used in the workplace. Some even became "technology nuts" and collectors who could not resist buying new gadgets. My own father resembled a child on Christmas when he acquired his first iPod, installed our family's first iMac and inserted his appointments on his original Palm Pilot organizer.
After the turn of the millennium, cell phones became popular, but only for those who could afford the expensive appliances. But when prices went down, even stingy parents realized that equipping their family members with cell phones was important not only for communication, but also for safety. Cell phones enabled communication in case of emergencies.
While their husbands and growing teenage children lusted for new technology, mothers remained skeptical. Grumbling, they said, "Whatever happened to old-fashioned communication? Why write an e-mail when you could write a letter?"
After resisting technology for years, mothers began to realize that this resistance was futile. The pressure from the media, their peers and their own families to convert became too overwhelming. Moms begrudgingly bought their first cell phones, signed up for their first Gmail accounts, and began to learn, ever so slowly, how to communicate in the 21st century.
Today, we like to make fun of our mothers for their lack of tech savvy and their stubbornness in clinging to antiquated methods of communication. When we see our mothers write letters, we scoff and tell them to save time by putting their message in an e-mail. And yet, no one can deny the effectiveness and power of the handwritten note. For example, even in our technology-obsessed society, a thank you note to an employer post-interview can make the difference between getting your dream job and being left in the dust by your competition.
While we must engage our mothers with new technology, we must also entreat them to teach us the more personal communication methods of the past. Before our generation becomes completely addicted to the typed message, let's take a second to learn and conserve the art of letter writing before it disappears in an avalanche of tweets and texts.
Lupo Fiasco The technology gap
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