Every time I try to Facetime my 91 year old Aunt Rita, I end up staring at her ceiling fan for twenty minutes, while she yells “Can you see me now?” from somewhere off-screen.
And I keep thinking, “This is it. This is how we all end up.”
Yep, as technology advances, we’re all headed there.
Yeah, you too.
You’re probably reading this on your phone thinking you’re exempt because you know how to use Instagram filters. But that’s temporary.
Technology’s moving so fast that in twenty years you’ll be the one showing your grand-kids your forehead on whatever Black Mirror tech they’re using to communicate.
We’re all just temporarily not-stupid.
Think that’s harsh? Well, in 1993 we thought AOL was mind-blowing. Now we get annoyed if our AI doesn’t understand our sarcasm. We went from “You’ve Got Mail” to “Your Robot Therapist is Ready to See You” in one generation. And the pace isn’t slowing down
When I was in my twenties, if you wanted to watch a movie, you had to go to Blockbuster and physically take a movie from a shelf. Now my son gets mad if he has to wait two seconds for Netflix to load.
And it’s not just movies. Everything’s different now. We’ve got robots writing poetry, cars that drive themselves and toilets that analyze your poop. Like, actual poop analysis. That’s what we’re doing with technology. Wild stuff.
Meaning?
If we’re going to keep up with today’s rapid-fire advancing world… we need to become lifelong learners.
Because every time you say “I’m too old to learn that,” you’re basically volunteering to be obsolete. That’s the choice you’re making.
Sure, maybe you don’t need to learn every new thing that comes along. Nobody’s saying you need to master quantum computing by Tuesday. But you do need to keep your brain flexible enough to adapt.
Tech people call this being in “Permanent beta,” which means never considering yourself done with learning.
And that’s hard, because we all want to be done. We all want to just sit back and say, “That’s it. I’m caught up. I know all the things I need to know.”
But you can’t in today’s world. Because the moment you do that, the world just keeps going on without you. Suddenly you’re that person at the grocery store holding up the self-checkout line because you don’t know how to scan an avocado.
And this fate applies to every single one of us, even that 25-year-old influencer, who’s now posting TikToks about cryptocurrency, thinking they’re gonna stay tech-savvy forever.
My guy… in thirty years, you’re gonna be the old dude yelling at your brain implant because it keeps auto-translating your thoughts into Spanish.
Look around. Everything you think is normal right now is going to be hilariously outdated in like, eight minutes.
Remember when we thought carrying around 1,000 songs in our pocket was revolutionary? Now we’re mad if our contact lenses can’t project holograms. Okay, that’s one’s not real yet, but give it a week.
Plus you know what else is really messed up?
We’re living in a time where information is basically free. You can learn anything, anytime, anywhere.
The entire knowledge of humanity is literally in your pocket.
And what do we do with this superpower? Watch videos of dogs being scared by cucumbers. Argue with strangers about whether hot dogs are sandwiches. Scroll mindlessly through other people’s carefully curated lies about their lives.
Meanwhile there’s an irony here – and folks, the irony is delicious. We could be using all this incredible technology to actually learn how to use technology, so we stay up to date with everything.
But it’s so overwhelming, we freeze and do nothing. It’s like we get “tech vertigo” – that dizzy feeling when faced with yet another software update.
So we do what any rational person would do when confronted with overwhelming change: absolutely nothing.
We stand perfectly still, like a possum playing dead in the face of danger, hoping that if we don’t move, technology will stop moving too. Meanwhile, our phones keep accumulating apps that we’re too afraid to open.
But I have some good news in the middle of this rant, too.
Last week, my 91 year old Aunt Rita finally figured out how to position her phone during FaceTime, and she got to blow my son a kiss and he got to wave back at her.
Then Aunt Rita hits me with this: “I wish I’d learned this sooner. I could have seen him growing up.”
And there it is. The real cost of refusing to learn isn’t about technology – it’s about the moments you miss, the connections you lose, the world that moves on without you.
Look, I get it. Learning new things is uncomfortable. It makes you feel like an idiot every time you have to ask your kid how to make your phone stop automatically playing YouTube videos.
But you know what’s worse? Being the person who can’t participate in their own life because they decided learning was optional.
The choice is yours:
- You can be a lifelong learner and deal with the occasional discomfort of not knowing things.
- Or you can be a living museum piece, a human time capsule stuck in whatever era you decided was “good enough.”
So do what you can to push through your fear of technology and stay up to date. Because the future’s coming whether you study for it or not.
And it’s coming fast.
We went from phones with cords to phones with more computing power than NASA had when they landed on the moon, in less time than it takes to pay off a student loan.
And hey, if you think I’m exaggerating, just remember – there are people alive today who’ve lived through the invention of television, the internet, smartphones, and AI. Imagine explaining TikTok to someone from 1940.
Now imagine what someone from 2060 is going to have to explain to you.
Better start studying.