As a person from the baby-boomer era, it is frightening to think about how far we have come with technology over such a short period. I predicted 30 years ago that computers would be a passing fad, I'm an idiot. It was just 30 years ago that the first mobile phone went on sale at a modest cost of $4,000.00. And with that device all you could do was make a phone call provided you were near a cell-tower.
In 1983, Motorola (who?) marketed the first mass-produced phone. Ten years later Nokia (who?) came out with their GSM phone and Motorola released the first phone with a digital display screen. Six years on and mobile phones came with music players and predictive text. In 2002, Nokia released a series of phones with advanced technology and just four years later came the pocket PC.
Move to today and phones with 3D technology are about to break the market. So it took ten years to go from a clunky phone that could only make calls to one with a digital display, six years to introduce basic features and two years further on to have a phone that does everything your computer can do and much more.
Here are some predictions from others on where we will be in 2020;
- 5G phone network will be released.
- Your phone will read aloud text messages, news updates and FB postings.
- All homes will have ultra-high definition TVs.
- Holographic images will become commonplace.
- Cars will drive themselves.
- Robots will become household items.
- The internet will be humanised and have 5 billion subscribers.
- Healthcare will be data driven, 3D printers will be used to replace organs and diseases such as cancer and diabetes will be monitored in real-time.
So what is the point of my post? That we baby-boomers need to keep pace with technological advances or we will become living dinosaurs. Here's a fact that may encourage you to learn - the top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 never existed in 2004. Change is so rapid that 65 percent of today’s primary school children will end up with jobs that haven’t been invented yet.
So what should you do if you are a baby-boomer who is reluctant to embrace emerging technology? Start learning, now. You need to start learning how to use new technology as soon as it is released. You need to get your brain to start thinking differently about technology, no longer is it a gimmick, it is a necessity. You need to get excited about new technology rather than be afraid of it. Lastly you need to maximise the use of new technology, use them all.
By doing all of the above, your brain will become accustomed to new technology that same way millenials (Gen-Ys) do today. Give a millenial a new device and they will have it working in less than two minutes without instructions. They love it, they use it, they need it.
The sooner you get to start operating new things the less stressful the process will be. In fact, your brain will thank you for doing so.