The Succumbening (which is not even remotely a word)
I dropped my Droid Turbo in P. Terry's this morning.Then I picked it up. No damage. This phone is a tank, along with its extraordinary battery life.
An older woman (maybe mid to late 60s) approached me a few seconds later as I was refilling my drink. "What kind of phone is that?" she asked.
"A Droid Turbo," I said.
"I noticed you dropped it and it didn't break," she said.
"It's pretty durable," I said. "And the battery life is ridiculous. It runs forever between charges."
"It does?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Where did you get it?"
"Verizon."
"Is their plan reasonable?" she asked.
"As reasonable as anyone else," I said. Faint praise.
"I'm looking," she said. "I have yet to succumb to a mobile device."
The way she said that made me think about how some people--particularly older people--see new technology.
When I see new technology, I just see it as another tool. Other people, though, see it as a threat, even a danger.
This has been going on forever, though. Do you know what one of the first threats was? Books!
I can't remember where I read this, so I can't give you an exact quote, but books were considered a real lifestyle and cultural threat when they become popular. A threat, not a tool.
In high school, my best friend's mom (who was a teacher and a highly intelligent woman) called television "the idiot box". She refused to have a television in her house, even though there were a good number educational/PBS type shows that she would have greatly enjoyed. She would have none of it, because television was a threat, not a tool.
Virtual reality is going to go through this. Twenty years from now, or even ten, VR is going to be embedded in education and professional training as a very important tool. Right now, though, it seems like non-tech people see it as some kind of threat.
To what, I'm not sure.
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