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Throughout human history we have experienced challenges with change. For many decades the changes came more slowly and we were able to adjust before the next big change hit us: candle to light bulb, horse to car, talking with family to watching TV. Oh, wait. That last one isn’t really the same. (Or is it?) Change was still difficult but it was the way the world worked and we adjusted whether we wanted to or not. Imagine going from an agrarian society to an industrial society. And that’s when “you-know-what” hit the fan. It was right at that point that change “changed” and started speeding up. Now it often changes not only decade-by-decade but year-by-year and month-by-month and sometimes day-by-day. Technology is loose and it’s not going to be caught and put back into the box. Is that bad?
I’ve been working on my family tree and in records my aunt collected and shared with me I have read about interesting family members. Most all of them were farmers and slowly they began using mechanized farm equipment. Electricity came to their homes in the country and even in remote areas. Farms closer to cities started joining water and sewer lines. Roads became paved with the increase of automobile purchases. Street lights, electronic traffic signals, telephones, radios, TVs, it just kept coming.
When I was very little we had a wringer washer machine. (Yes, I’m old.) Our dryer was a clothesline. My grandmother once fell out of a three-story building pulling her laundry in on a pulley system clothesline. She pulled, it pulled back, and down she went. She broke almost all of her bones and was in bed for a year. She was thrilled when clothes dryers were manufactured and bought one immediately and did not pine for the days when she ran her heavy wet laundry on a clothesline three stories up.
I was an adult with my own home when I got my first dishwasher. We were young and liked to entertain and I remember countless nights and even the next day working on dishes and pots and pans after a night of entertaining before we had the dishwasher. The trash would be piled high and took multiple trips outside. If trash pickup day was later in the week we had to stomp on the trash and it began to smell. Then years later we got a disposal and a trash compactor--after the dishwasher. I had my priorities. When the trash compactors became a home appliance I was stunned (and thrilled) to learn of their existence.
I remember having phones in every room of the house in my young adult homes. When I was little we had only one phone and it was on the wall. (Wish I had it now. It was wonderful.) Now I have no landline at all. Just my cell, which goes where I go in my pocket, my purse, or a clip. My dad told me that when he was very young many people in the remote area he lived in still used horses for daily transportation though some of the more affluent folks had cars. My grandmother had lots of stories about horses and no cars. I am lucky that I’m the age I am to remember personally or through family stories that not too long ago we lived quite differently than we do today.
Now we live in a world of technology that changes so fast that unless we read tech magazines or tech news articles we can miss giant chunks of what’s going on or what’s coming. And so I remember not too long ago reading about eBooks. I was amazed and, frankly, though I love and embrace technology I found the thought of an eBook hard to fathom. I didn’t “get it.” It was purely an emotional response as I looked at my collection of books. Maybe that’s how folks felt when they looked at their horses on the day they bought a car.
Several months ago I watched a documentary on the demise of small independently owned bookstores. Even fairly large family owned stores with long histories of being in business were closing every day. Instead, the giant discount bookstores with their in-house coffee cafés were drawing the customers who once visited the neighborhood bookstores. It wasn’t only about the discounts though. Often the giant bookstores are located in shopping centers so that patrons can shop for many items in various stores and even pick up groceries without leaving the parking lot. Today’s working family wants to get it all done at the fewest locations possible. With that in mind, how are the big mega discount bookstores going to compete with the eBooks?
Not only are families busy on the weekends with home maintenance and family maintenance tasks there are thousands of TV stations, thousands of video games, thousands of things to do on a computer, and countless hours to be spent texting our family and friends on our phones. How about the video stores? Music stores? With a click we can buy whatever we want or rent whatever we want online. We can store it all on our computers and/or portable devices.
I just read that eBooks outsold hardbound and paperback books last year. It seems I just learned about eBooks and already they are outselling traditional hard copies. I myself have a published novel out there in the world, which published in 2005. I was stunned at the speed of acceptance at which the eBook platforms took off. Of all technology it seems to have hit the world running and has not looked back. It’s growing and growing and people are reading more than ever.
I don’t have an eReader [yet] but I asked a few people about them and I was impressed with all the eReaders can do. They can hold thousands of books. They are comfortable to use physically regardless of where or how one sits. The battery charges last for a long time. They are slim and easy to put in a purse or large pocket or travel cases. They can be adjusted for those who need large print. They bookmark where readers leave off. They are easy to search if going back to a topic is necessary. The list was huge. The most important aspects though were comfort when reading and cost of books. Thousands of titles are available for .99-cents and instant download (download is free on the models my contacts use). And many titles are free.
It’s always been challenging to get some children to sit still and read even when they enjoy reading. There are so many other things competing for reading time today. But now with eBooks, and especially the .99-cent eBooks, kids are flocking to their eBook downloads. They are reading. Adults are reading. Everyone is reading more than ever. Because of eBooks. And not just books. Magazines, blogs, newspapers, and so on.
My book cover is beautiful and I was sad to hear that the eBooks were taking over the paperback sales until I downloaded an eBook app for my computer and my smart phone and took a look at some of the eBooks. They are equally as beautiful. They have not removed the beautiful covers. They have not removed the dedications or acknowledgements. They are books. They are just a new type of book.
I lived in a small northern California town for many years that relied heavily on the lumber industry. The lumber industry started having serious problems and many lumber workers lost their jobs and homes. Support businesses closed right and left. It was devastating. Eventually everyone moved and found new work in different areas and life went on. People adjusted because they had to.
Remember farm aid? When the huge agri-corporations started encroaching on the farmers of the world, family farms that had been in business for generations died seemingly over night. They too either had to work for the large corporations or moved on and sought other work. After losing their farms.
The auto industry imploded on itself and killed Detroit. I lived there for a few years and learned the magnificent history of Detroit in the auto empire’s hay day. Detroit was a world-class city. It was tremendous. People lived well and had good lives. Take a look at Detroit today. It breaks my heart.
But it isn’t good to wallow in what we’ve lost. Somehow we have to find a way to live with the changes and move and change with them. We have to keep up. It’s even harder for seniors to do that. My daughter changes cell phones with her hair color. I had one cell for many years until she bought me a fancy new smart phone. I think she was embarrassed that I had the old clunker. But I love my new smart phone. I took the time to learn how to use all of its features and now it’s my computer-on-the-go. I’m looking at tablets now. I might get a tablet instead of an eReader since the tablets are comfortable for that purpose and can be used for other applications.
I love all the technology and changes but I’m just old enough to know that it hasn’t worked for everyone and some older folks than I am have a very difficult time. Some can’t even manage their TVs anymore. My mom is 85 and I sort of forced her to use one of our old laptops. She has mobility issues so I showed her how to order things online and how to do a little research on topics of interest to her and email and I’m getting ready to put her on Facebook. I think she’ll enjoy that. She’s not so sure.
So rather than lamenting the changes, which we can’t change, we should try our best to adjust. We may not love the changes or even like the changes but to continue to live in the world without our brains closing down we have to adjust. And for seniors I believe it’s good to constantly strain the brain cells and force ourselves to learn new things. I spent a week figuring out my new remote control for my satellite dish I recently had installed. I now love it. I can’t believe what it can do. I don't like most programming on TV but with this new service I can pick and choose and get quality programming that I enjoy for the first time in years. I installed this service because my daughter and her boyfriend gave me a flat screen TV for my 65th birthday. It was crying for the satellite package. Now it’s happy and so am I.
So my own published books have now been placed on a popular eBook inventory. I visited the website’s inventory and there they were. They look wonderful. (My sister did the cover art and she’s a genius with paint.) The first book is still in paperback as well and next to it is the eBook edition and next to that my second book which doesn’t have a paperback. It went straight to the eBook platform. If it does well I will publish in paperback because I still love to sit with a nice book by the window and read the morning away. Plus my story is a three-part series and I envision all three of them in a box set one day, next to the eBooks. I’m comparing eReaders and tablets and pricing them. For now I just have the eReader app on my computer and one on my smart phone. But I know I’ll get one. I just know it. And, yes, I want one. But I also know I’ll continue to buy hard copy books too. Probably not as many. Part of me is sad about that but part of me knows it’s how technology works.
Sometimes I end my posts with some sort of conclusion or resolution but I don't have one this time. It is what it is and we either continue to learn and grow or we’re going to be left behind. And we don't have to like change. Though my grandmother loved the electric clothes dryers she still preferred the wringer washers for cleaning power. She accepted that the dryer was more convenient and though the wringer was hard work she still used it for many years. I don't believe she was ever satisfied with the fancy new washer she eventually got.
For me, I do know that I don't want to hang my laundry on a pulley line on the third floor of a building. And I don't want to spend two days washing dishes after a party. My old tapes and CDs and records are stored. All of my huge collection of music (over 10,000 titles) is on my small digital music player which I attach to my stereo. I can’t go back.
[Note: I deliberately left brand names off of all the technology I wrote about. I didn’t want to favor one or the other and that wasn’t the point of the posting. We know what’s out there and it’s worth comparison shopping.]
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. Blog series began in March 2009.]
