And Then It Changed Agin

I saw a quote on an Instagram post that I can’t stop thinking about:

Huh.

I’m a Millennial. An elder Millennial. A Methusillennial, as I sometimes call myself.

And until I saw that post, I would have considered myself tech savvy.

I’m the person people ask how to save something as a PDF. Or if I can print something for them. Once, someone asked me if I knew what floor IT was on, which feels like we had stretched the definition of “tech savvy” pretty far by that point.

But I’d never really questioned the label. I know my way around computers. I’m pretty good at figuring out software. When something isn’t working, my first instinct is usually to try to fix it myself.

Tech savvy. Sure. That sounds like me.

Except...what does that actually mean?

It sounds like a state you attain. Like there is a body of information called Technology that you can learn, and once you’ve learned enough of it, congratulations. You know technology.

Very Neo opening his eyes in The Matrix and announcing, “I know kung fu.”

I know technology.

Except...do I?

Ask me to do something in a program I’ve never seen before? Let’s be real, I’m not going to magically know where everything is.

Give me a device I’ve never used? There’s a decent chance I won’t immediately know how it works.

But I’ll probably start poking around.

Maybe the reason I’ve always thought of myself as tech savvy isn’t that I know technology.

Maybe it’s that I’ve gotten pretty good at figuring it out.

Is that what “tech adaptable” means?

If it is, when did I learn how to do that?

I genuinely don’t know.

I don’t remember learning how to use a computer. I just remember using one.

Our first computer was in my dad’s office. I don’t remember when it arrived, or the first time I sat down in front of it, or anyone explaining to me what a mouse did. I remember playing Oilcap. I remember Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? I remember Dr. Sbaitso, a computerized therapist I could type things to and get responses from, which in retrospect feels like an extremely early preview of where my life was headed with the introduction of ChatGPT and other AI tools into the workplace.

I had computer class at school, so clearly some of this was being actively taught to me. And when I didn’t know how to do something, there were instructions.

Actual instructions.

Things used to come with user manuals.

So “I don’t remember learning how to use a computer” isn’t really the same thing as “I never had to learn.”

I did.

Childhood memories can be fuzzy, sure, but I don’t remember technology entering my life as this one big thing.

Which is weird, because now that I’m older I realize just how much of it was new.

It feels like there was always something. And then that something changed. And then it changed again.

At some point I got my own computer. And then I got my own phone line, so people could still call our house while I was using the internet.

Oh, dial-up internet.

I can only imagine what that phone bill looked like. I’m sorry, Mom and Dad!

I learned how things worked.

And then the things changed.

I used to record The X-Files on VHS.

And I was serious about it. I bought tapes in bulk so I would always have one available. I labeled them with the episode details. I kept those tapes long after I even had a VCR anymore. I did eventually get rid of them, but apparently getting rid of the machine that could actually play them was not initially enough to convince me.

Then I got a DVR.

Suddenly recording anything didn’t require a supply of blank tapes or my labeling system. I could tell the DVR to record a show and it would.

Set it and forget it.

And now, most of the time, I don’t need to record a show at all. I can just stream it.

I used to print MapQuest directions before I went somewhere. Then I desperately wanted a GPS because I am very capable of getting lost. Now I have directions in my phone.

My first cell phone had T9 texting. Getting a phone with a physical keyboard felt like a revelation.

Giving up that keyboard for an iPhone touchscreen did not.

I had a hard time with that transition. I liked my keyboard. I knew how my keyboard worked. I did not see why I needed to give up a perfectly good thing I already knew how to use.

But I did.

And now I can’t imagine going back.

I can be resistant to change and also adapt very quickly.

Apparently those things aren’t opposites.

I MISS PRINTED TICKETS SO BAD.

Digital tickets are convenient. I don’t have to print anything. I can put them in my phone. I can transfer one to someone else without having to physically hand it to them.

But now my ticket also requires my phone to work.

I need a signal, or I need to have remembered to put the ticket in my wallet ahead of time. I need the app to cooperate. I need my battery not to die.

A paper ticket never stopped working because my phone did.

And then there’s what happens after I use it.

I have the ticket stub from seeing Alanis Morissette when I was a kid. I have old movie tickets, faded to the point that some of them are barely readable. I have tickets from my first year as a Mets season-ticket holder. Old plane tickets.

I have every single monthly train pass I used from May 2006 through October 2013.

Every. Single. One.

The ticket got me in. And then, after it had completely stopped being useful as a ticket, I still had it.

I could keep it.

A digital ticket gets me through the door.

And then it disappears.

I adapted. I use the digital ticket. There are things about it that are genuinely easier.

I still want my ticket stub.

Most of the time, though, I figure out how to use the new thing.

That doesn’t mean I already know how.

At work, I’ve lost track of how many pieces of software I’ve encountered for the first time. Usually my reaction is some version of: I don’t know this software, but it seems similar to this other thing. Let me try to figure it out.

And when I can’t figure it out on my own, I go looking for help.

That part hasn’t really changed. The help has.

There were user manuals. I kept them.

Then there were books. Excel for Dummies.

Then there was Google. Forums. Reddit. YouTube videos made by someone who had already encountered the exact bizarre problem I was having and, bless them, decided to explain it to the rest of us.

And now there’s AI.

Which means even the help has a learning curve now.

But the basic impulse is the same.

I don’t know how to do this.

Okay. What do I know that might help me figure it out?

And if I really can’t figure it out, I’ll ask someone.

I’m not opposed to asking for help. I just want to exhaust my reasonable “do it myself” options first.

Which is probably why, when someone asks me a technology question without seeming to have tried anything first, my immediate internal reaction is:

Did you even TRY to figure it out?

Not: Why don’t you know this?

I didn’t know it either.

The question is what you do next.

My parents have figured out plenty of technology I didn’t grow up watching them use.

My dad can spend hours scrolling TikTok while playing a game on his iPad. My mom plans vacations in Google Sheets.

But something did change in our house.

The direction of the learning.

My parents gave me access to technology in the first place. Our first computer was in my dad’s office. There was a fax machine in our house because he worked from home. I knew what a Rolodex was because he had one.

Then I started bringing things home from computer class.

Eventually, I became the person they asked when they didn’t know how to do something.

I don’t remember when that happened.

I don’t remember becoming the tech person any more than I remember learning how to use the computer in the first place.

Maybe that’s why the Millennial part of that Instagram post feels familiar to me.

Technology wasn’t something that arrived at one point and then I learned how to use it.

It kept changing while I was changing too.

I grew up as the technology grew up.

So why did I always think of myself as tech savvy?

Probably because that’s what it looks like from the outside.

Someone asks me how to do something and I know how to do it.

Someone puts a piece of software in front of me and, eventually, I’m using it.

Something stops working and, more often than not, I figure out why.

You see the part where I know.

You don’t necessarily see the part where I didn’t.

“Tech savvy” describes the result.

I know how to do this.

“Tech adaptable” includes everything that happened before I got there.

I didn’t know how to do this.

This looks kind of like something else I know.

Let me try this.

Nope.

Okay, what else?

Let me look it up.

Still no.

Fine. I’ll ask someone.

Oh.

There it is.

I don’t think I’ve spent my life accumulating enough information to finally be able to say, “I know technology.”

I think I’ve spent my life getting increasingly comfortable with not knowing something yet.

And maybe that’s why “adaptable” hit me differently.

It leaves room for the part where I have no idea what I’m doing.

And there will always be something I have no idea how to do.

There’s no finish line to reach.

And the technology certainly isn’t slowing down just because I’m getting older.

There will be new software. New devices. New ways of doing things I already know how to do. Things I haven’t even thought of yet.

So far, none of it has ever truly felt like starting from scratch.

So maybe the Instagram post was right about me.

Maybe I’m tech adaptable.

So far.

Ask me again in 20 years.

Maybe I’ll still be looking at whatever replaced whatever replaced whatever replaced the smartphone and thinking, “This seems kind of like that other thing. Let me figure it out.”

Or maybe I’ll look at it and say:

Absolutely fucking not.