Reconnecting Our Technological Gaps

Kuya Gil Boy and Ate Liza learning how to make an email account. I’ve become a one day computer teacher to my old folks 😛

I wanted to chuckle as my brother and my sis-in-law learned how to make an e-mail account. But I couldn’t. They were just too serious then. I can’t believe how we’ve all aged well.

As Kuya Gil Boy and Ate Liza dropped by to ask how to send a file to my own e-mail account (due to the massive lack of USBs in the house), I explained to them that they can’t send it without having an account themselves. So, I had to help them make one. While explaining why a username should be unique or why a password should be complicated, Ate Liza made notes on the step-by-step process on paper. I smirked deep within as they argued between themselves what username to create or what to jot down on their paper.

It was a funny moment for me. And yet, I am surprised what a huge jump my generation has gone from theirs.

Oh, by the way, I’m more than a decade younger than my two siblings.

Looking at them, I couldn’t believe how fast our generation has accelerated. From cassette tapes to micro USBs, we’re now beyond our parents’ imagination. My mom, just like most of the retirees in her generation, is afraid of learning how to use the computer. She told me how the older teachers in the school she once taught lost enthusiasm in learning the computer because of that impatient, rude, young instructor. Somehow, the gap between the older and the younger generation is not only through technology, but in values as well.

My parents lived in a time when everything went slowly. Even my Kuya was torn between the provincial society and the cultural revolution in the 70’s and 80’s. My generation is a microwave generation — we want it all fast and instant. The thinking and mindset between our generations varies. Because of the slow pace of the first decades after Commonwealth, I observed how old people in my mom’s generation tend to be patient. Most kids in my time have the tendency to be impatient.

And so, just like the young computer teacher my mom described, I felt I had the tendency to be impatient, too. It’s because in our viewpoint, we expect everyone to know what we know and learn as fast as we kids do.

But here is a lesson my generation should learn. I could have raised my voice while teaching my folks, expecting them to catch up as fast as I expect them to. But I have to remember that their thinking is not my thinking.

The style of education they received is not the same as mine.

I realized that while teaching my folks the art of e-mail creation, I felt that technology is a way to connect between our generations. I was able to share to them what I know, and somehow helped them in their need.

As we young people teach our older folks, I hope we learn how to reset our value of patience. In this way, we can connect with them.  Not only would they learn from us, but we learn from them, as well. Love is needed while teaching, whereas we set aside their incapacity and help them get through it.