The Tech’s the Thing

As I’ve mentioned in other blogs, during my career I worked in the high-tech industry for something like thirty years. The job I retired from often dealt with what the development engineers liked to call “bleeding edge” technology. It was fascinating stuff, and I’ve always prided myself on being highly tech-savvy. However, fast forward:

There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that can put a person in their place like a ten-year-old gamer. It turns out that not only am I nowhere near as tech-savvy as I thought, now that I’m out of the workforce I’m also losing the race to keep up with all the new tech coming out. Eighteen months out of the tech development loop and I might as well have traveled back in time to the Stone Age. While my attention is distracted by all the AI hysteria, the ten-year-old is mansplaining to me how to connect all his gaming gear to my devices, and how he can do all this remotely as well. Normally I’m not a fan of mansplaining, but his version is pretty adorable.

A couple of weeks ago I simply threw my hands up, turned all the devices over to him and let him do his thing. I figured if something gets messed up, my stuff is appropriately backed up so why worry. It turns out that he’s seriously on top of how to do all the things he’s been explaining to me how to do so that I could do it myself (if I wanted to, which I really, really don’t). Ask me how many times he’s helpfully told me, “There’s a YouTube video you can watch for that.”

It’s like this kid picks up technology information instantly, sometimes maybe even telepathically. I really do have to him explain things as he goes along, especially when he’s gaming. Sure, I could figure it out on my own (again, if I wanted to) but unfortunately, I get vertigo when watching first-person shooters. I can handle Minecraft if his avatar isn’t jumping around too quickly, but the more he’s into his game the faster he goes.

I noticed something pretty cool recently, though. He likes trying out all sorts of different avatars and skins, and from my admittedly limited observations, it seems to me that he and his fellow cohort gamers are remarkably not gender-locked in that regard. I hope as they grow up, they’ll be able to just be themselves, wherever they happen to land.