I spoke to my dad over the weekend. He said that he got just over a foot of snow in the Nor’ Easter that ripped through the East Coast.
I went out and took this picture. This should be the final nail in the coffin of me ever moving back to that region of the world. It is hard to see, but there were throngs of people hanging out on the Embarcadero. The guy on the left was juggling, fairly poorly, I might add, for tips.
Since the old man was bored (what else can you do when you have a foot of snow on the ground), he finally succumbed to 3+ years of nagging and downloaded Yahoo Messenger. My younger brother got him a webcam for Christmas and set it all up for him when he was out there recently. To my knowledge, though, I don’t think that he ever played with it until Old Man Winter twisted Old Man Schnaars’ arm with a 48 hour lock down. Football season is over (it never really started this year in Philadelphia), so with nothing else to do on a Sunday, I get a ping: hey scott, its dad.
He had my brother in another session and wanted to set up a conference call with the two of us, plus run webcam so that he can see and talk to my kids. It was the perfect, ‘Wow, this is really here’ moment. If we can get this going, this will be great.
My folks aren’t technophobes. My mom is addicted to her crackberry. My dad drives a CAD/CAM system that will rival anything out there. Like a lot of people in his generation, it is my opinion that a lot of them simply don’t adopt technology that they view as redundant. IM is redundant to email, VOIP is redundant to just picking up the phone. In a lot of cases, I get it. Less is more.
Cory Treffiletti, SVP at Carat wrote last month (Reg Req) that 2006 is the year that everyone finally ‘Get’s it’. His feeling about ‘getting it’ came about during Christmas dinner when the conversation turns to Google Earth. Then, aunts, uncles and cousins all chime in to provide their two cents on Google Earth. Then the conversation turned to a recent story in the news about the FBI cookieing users machines and how this technology works. Not your typical holiday dinner conversation, at least if you are anywhere but the Bay Area.
While I think that ‘getting it’ is coming, I am still not seeing it. Google Earth is a cool, and very well written software application, but once you look at your house, the house you grew up in and some tourist destinations, it really serves no value whatsoever. It is a toy. It is no different then going online and reading the news or looking at photos of your grandkids. It is cool, but it isn’t really getting it.
My feelings were punctuated when my friend Tom and I were having a post bike ride coffee and a man, probably in his early 60’s came in with Motorola RAZR in hand. Attached to his ear was my least favorite fashion accessory, the Bluetooth headset. We both commented on this and I mentioned the article. Tom and I chatted about the devices that our respective parents have and how maybe, 2006 really is the year that people ‘Get it’. Then Mr. Bluetooth’s phone started to ring. “Hello”, ring (add annoying ring tone too), “Hello”, ring, “Hello”, ring. “This damn thing doesn’t work.”, opening the phone, “hello”.
I’d like to think that this is the year that old people (old being anyone 15 years older then you), get technology. It is still early in the year, but I don’t think that it is going to happen. IM is cool, Blackberrys are cool (as long as they still work), VoIP is cool and Bluetooth is cool, but they are all still toys for the masses (Yes, we lived before the era of Blackberrys). Until there is a compelling event for people, not in the technology industry, over the age of 50 to adopt technology, the year that people ‘get it’ is still many years away.
As for my VoIP experience with my dad, let’s just say that I am looking forward to his phone calls.
