The Technological Fault Line

I just bought myself the iPhone 5.

 

The iPhone 3GS which I had bought almost 4 years ago was actually working fine, though the processor and battery were struggling. So why did I indulge? The rationale I prefer to use, is that my Dad is visiting and it is a perfect time to give my old iPhone to him. The reality could be that it ‘was’ an indulgence!

 

My grouse with Apple  

 

So I have been using the iPhone 5 for three days and what strikes me the most about it is that I do not feel as if I am using a new phone. It took all of fifteen minutes to migrate my data, contacts, music and apps to the new device, after which I was ready to go. My home screen, wallpaper and page layouts were perfectly mirrored. So even though the transfer of data was seamless and I did not have to tear my hair out in frustration during this process, I feel a bit cheated.  

 

I think this is where Apple has probably got it wrong – like a professional athlete it makes everything seem too easy, leaving one with a sense of anticlimax. The agony of moving from one phone to the other has been eradicated, but along with it has also gone the sense of achievement of having mastered a new instrument. Coming face to face with perfection has taken away the fun I used to have in the past, berating the cretins who designed the software.

 

The Fault Line

 

I have written before about technology and the contrast in the comfort levels with technology between different generations. I have always been enamored by technology, though not in 'all' of its manifestations and avatars. I do however realize that my fascination is akin to a child’s delight with a magicians tricks - more to do with awe and a lack of fundamental understanding, rather than an ability to actually drive or influence it.

 

What I did not realize till recently was that my generation, absolutely perfectly, straddles the technological fault line. If one draws a line between the pre-digital and the post-digital era, my generation has a foot planted firmly on both sides. All other generations, before and after, lean more on one side than the other. Hence my life-span has been (very neatly) divided between the analog and the digital eras. 

 

However I do not mean to infer in any way that this line separates the use or adoption of digital technology by the populations on either side. It is just an arbitrary demarcation in time. For example I know many septuagenarians who use digital devices - but again that usage does not define the people on that side of the line. To me the fault line separates the comfort levels of people on either side. It is about understanding and accepting digital technology’s pervasiveness, rather than complaining and bemoaning its prevalence. Using technology is different from embracing it.

 

Why is this important?

 

It is not too often that the world sees a genuine flexion point and to have straddled both sides of that point is exceptional. Imagine the first use of fire, or the invention of the wheel. There must have been people even in those days, who could (would?) not take the step to embrace that technology, just as there were others who took it and ran with it.

 

I think the digital era will be as big (if not bigger) in its impact on humanity and the future, as the fire or the wheel were in their days. In eons to come digitization, of initially information but eventually of even physical constructs, will be viewed as the single most important advancement in our evolution.

 

But coming back to the present - I have given the old phone to my Dad and have requested my daughter to teach him how to use it. Seeing my 11 year old daughter, who has never used an iPhone, guiding my 84 year old father, is a surreal experience. Referring back to the digital bell curve – they both represent extreme outliers. He predates even the analog era and she is a child of the digital universe.

 

Observing his struggle with the easiest, most intuitive software on the face of this earth, made me even more aware of this technological fault line and the chasm that separates these two generations.

 

 

And in doing so, it also brought into stark focus my own generation’s unique place in history!