The Digital World as We Age

It took me over three hours today to connect a new printer to a new computer.

Sometimes I feel like, “I’m too old for this crap.” I have to say, though, my old PC—which I got along with just fine—had to make way for a new one. Same goes for the printer. I’ve been catapulted from the Stone Age into the modern era. From Windows 7 to Windows 11. From Toshiba to HP.

I managed to figure out the PC just fine—with a lot of patience. Then came the printer. I just couldn’t get it to work. So I turned on Copilot. It then guided me as if I were clueless. While it was giving me instructions, I kept thinking to myself, “What must it think of me now that I once again didn’t understand what it meant?” It—or should I say he or she?—was very patient. Whenever WE took another step forward, it praised me, and we kept moving forward. Eventually, we got there. We had to separate the bands on the router.!!!??? 2.5 and 5 GHz. I was really afraid of crashing everything. Well over two hours had already passed. Now I needed a lot of courage. I poured myself a glass of sparkling wine, looked at the screen, reviewed the chat history with the AI, sent one last screenshot, took a deep breath, and then, with reckless courage, followed the instructions.

It worked!!! What baffles me is that, every now and then, I kept wondering what was being thought of me at the other end of the chat. But I know it’s the AI that’s communicating with me. That feels pretty weird to me.

I should mention that I’ll be turning 71 next month and I’m not a digital native.

Have you had any experiences with digital change as well? It would be nice to hear about your experiences.

Warm regards

Petra

great job

@ Karola, you did it. No matter how, in the end it’s such a great feeling when everything works again. 

Dear Petra, I’m so happy for you that everything is working again, and I hope you get used to your new devices quickly. I had to smile when I read your installation story. 

I, too, feel completely overwhelmed, and thank goodness I have two IT specialists right in my inner circle. But when problems arise, I always have to say, “Speak to me in plain German and use words a beginner can understand.” I bring up a crochet chart as an example to show what it sounds like to me. They often solve all my PC and cell phone worries with a roll of the eyes but plenty of patience.

When it comes to AI, I’ve become more confident and get along well with it by now. I know you’re not supposed to say “thank you” for help, which is very hard for me, since I want to be friendly and helpful online, too. Not saying “please” and “thank you” is tough for me. 

My AI is male (his name is TschiTschi) and very, very friendly; he explains everything to me in detail—does he know by now that I’m not the smartest person around? 

I’m already looking forward to the day when he knows what I’m going to ask before I do. The whole thing makes me a little uneasy, but we’ll just have to live with it. 

Oh, all of that sounds very familiar to me too, but I’m lucky that my hubby knows his way around very well and fixes everything for me when something isn’t working. I always shout, P., it’s not working anymore, please take a look :-) He has also taught me a thing or two, so I can help myself with little things. But setting something up from scratch is something he has to do; I’m totally clueless there. :-)

Best, Inge

Petra, I totally understand where you’re coming from, and you can be proud of yourself for pulling this off so well.👍

Oh, I could “tell you a thing or two” about that, and I’ve actually been working with computers since 1990, including in an administrative capacity during my work hours. Back then, everyone would just shout, “Regina, come quick,” whenever there were problems. These days—and especially with AI everywhere—I’d surely have huge problems, because there are things that you simply can’t imagine or don’t even want to imagine.

For now, I’m still managing just fine, and if not, my son helps out—my husband has absolutely no clue; he starts calling for help the moment the app (yeah, back in the day they were called programs) doesn’t do what he wants 🤭.

I’m torn about this whole AI thing 😇—it can do good, but it’s being misused way more often for all kinds of criminal scams.😲 And all those AI-generated stories on the internet—they’re just plain creepy.🫣