Not necessarily the latest gadget

After poking around on Flickr and breezing through mashups, I've paused for a few days on the 27 Things trail (lest anyone think old wolfie has wandered off into the woods somewhere). So for the next couple of posts I thought I'd offer a few observations on online stuff and technology in general.

My dad is one of the so-called "Greatest Generation"--grew up in the Depression, served in World War II, and started a family in the middle years of the Baby Boom. That's also the generation for which the digital world has come late into their lives, if at all. For my dad, who's a widower in his 80's, high tech is a CD player or the remote for the cable TV. He probably has a general idea of what the Internet is, but very little concept of what can be found online. When we were planning to fly to Pennsylvania to attend my neice's graduation from Kutztown University, I offered to buy airline tickets online--and he seemed surprised that it was possible to do that.

I've tried to introduce him to a few modern conveniences, such as a cordless phone with an answering machine and a simple cell phone for emergency use in the car, but he's never gotten the hang of how to use either one. I swear he still has an old 1960's black dial phone somewhere in the house. On the other hand, does he need computers and a lot of high-tech gadgets? No. He's perfectly content to do without, and that's just fine.

So I thought about technology in our family's life and quickly realized that we might be considered a bit behind the times ourselves.

We have home computers, of course (3, in fact), but only upgraded from a dialup connection to a basic broadband service a year ago. One of our computers is an IBM PC with Windows 3.1, a first-generation Intel 486 chip, and a hard drive that has only 1/3 of the capacity of our 12-year-old son's 512Mb MP3 player. But when we bought the IBM in the early 90's it was state-of-the-art.

We don't own a Blackberry or an iPhone and don't send text messages on our cell phones (we get charged for every message). Our son is angling for an iPhone...but that ain't gonna happen, kiddo.

I still check out audiobooks on cassette because my car--a trusty 17-year-old Corolla--only has a cassette player. On the other hand, our van has a multi-disk CD changer and a plug for an MP3.

I've never bought music online for my MP3.

We've never e-mailed digital pictures (hey, at least give us credit for at least downloading them to the computer!!). In fact, we often use a 35mm camera that takes great photos. Flickr, however, offered some really interesting possibilities for uploading and sharing photos. And (see the post below) our pictures are a whole lot more interesting than someone in the grocery store with the package of beef tongue!!

For a long time I've kind of felt that I didn't always need to have the latest-and-greatest electronic gadget, like skipping the 60Gb iPod in favor of a 4Gb Sansa SanDisk. However, in my somewhat short journey down the 27 Things trail, I've already discovered that there are a wealth of online possibilities out there, and that perhaps it's time to expand my horizons.

Maybe it's time to forget about books on cassette and download them to my MP3. Wonder if I can find a portable audio player that can be connected to an MP3 so I can take it in the car...