I am not immune to propaganda. But I do seem to be more resistant to it than average. Recently, when (not if) the conversation turns to effective use of LLMs, I have been met by genuine surprise that I don’t use them yet. Aren’t I a technologist? Shouldn’t I be worried about getting left behind as a member of the perpetual underclass, or worse, an older adult who doesn’t understand phones?
I am not. This steadfast belief comes from the reason that I became a technologist in the first place. That’s right, it’s my dad.
My dad loved technology. He bought a portable computer in 1986. You would injure yourself if you tried to put that thing on your lap. My childhood memories include a background specter of my dad filming everything with his shoulder-mounted video recorder. The closest visual analogy I can draw on today would be an equally ancient boombox. In 2017, he insisted on buying a shiny new iMac despite my pleas to stick with a secure-by-design, normie-friendly Chromebook or iPad.
My dad was really bad with technology. That’s unfair, actually. He was a great mechanic and woodworker, doing all of our auto maintenance himself except for the really gnarly jobs. He taught me how our lawnmower worked, inside and out. What he was really bad with was computers. Something about the difference between mechanical devices that had one job composed of single-function parts in service of that job, and electronic devices that could do anything you asked them to, made the latter completely incomprehensible to him.
Well, somebody had to make our perpetually growing collection of computers behave. That task naturally fell to me as I got older and more capable. I grew up with an intuitive understanding of how to computer, matched only by an ironic helplessness around mechanical devices. You can just imagine my dad’s frustration at my inability to understand a simple oil change. This computer whispering wasn’t a chance outcome. My parents, immigrant factory workers both, were convinced that computers would be the future and steered me toward them. Before I was born, they committed to this plan to give their children a chance at a better life than their own.
Eliding many years of hard work and lucky breaks, that’s the story of how I came to be this odd duck of a technologist. I’m surrounded by early adopters and innovators who make my early majority inclinations feel like Luddism at times. But my upbringing imbued me with a deep-seated intuition around carefully weighing the pros and cons and waiting until a shiny new thing is more mature before buying in by default. And it imbues me with a useful perspective to have in strategy meetings. I wouldn’t even call it conservative. Just having a moderate voice in the room advocating for simplicity and proven, reliable solutions over what’s hot right now adds a lot of value.
And it seems to be working out fine? I didn’t get a cell phone until 2004. I got a music streaming account in 2021. I still don’t have a tablet or smart TV. And despite my constant anxieties about what people think of me, I don’t think anyone thinks of me as an out-of-touch old fogey. I get bombarded with the same fears about falling behind as everyone else, but I seem to have developed a natural resistance to them. Thanks, Dad. I miss you dearly.