www.jec.org.uk

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-b ... s-49062437

I have some sympathy, but is it really any different to any of our everyday possessions?
Maybe he has a smartphone, central heating, flat screen TV, broadband, microwave oven or a hybrid electric vehicle ...well, ok, I'm sure he doesn't have the last one. Perhaps he has none in that list.

With due respect I think he should have kept up with technology or retired some time ago to give someone younger and with more drive a job.

Harsh? perhaps, but I could imagine his father saying what was wrong with the traction engine and horse, can't get on with these new fangled petrol engine things.

Al

Any new gadget or gizmo is a headache if you don`t have the knowledge or an inquisitive mind set to keep up with the technology. My eighty year old friend tells me he doesn`t understand new gadgets like computors. I reminded him that the first computor was the German Enigma machine and that he was only five when the Second World War finished. He went on to tell me that he lost his job in Fleet Street as a type setter when computerized printing methods came into being. I suggested that if he had seen which way the tide was turning, he would have embraced the technology and kept himself working. The reply was that he didn`t want to learn about the latest developments and immersed himself in Fools Blindness preferring to become a train booking clerk.....Then automated tick sales and electronic turnstiles became popular and he lost his job again.

Stupidly, I turned down computer studies at school in 1972. I was fourteen at the time. I didn`t see why I should need the technology. That was indeed Fools Blindness. Only when I was forty seven did I buy my first XP driven laptop. Friends around me were speaking a language that I didn`t understand. They bought on eBay and got deals I couldn`t possibly find on the local high street. They perused "Forum" sites and it appeared to me that I was seriously missing out by not engaging with the IT community. We went to Currys and spent a thousand of my hard earned pounds. One of the guys rigged up all the gear, turned it on, said "off you go, you are on your own now". A week later, I had the basics and in less than a year I became a JEC Co-ordinator for the S-types. A month later, I had my first article in the magazine. I appeared to have joined the modern World and haven`t look back since. Lets face it, if you want to do something, then you will. If you can`t get the motivation, you won`t. I fail to see why an eighty year old man cannot understand new cars. I`m only nineteen years younger and I have no difficulty with the concept. I understand new cars because I have taken the time and trouble to learn about them.

Essentially we all have to stay up with the latest developments if we want to keep up with the World. How long a person is able to do that is probably down to mental health condition, age and the desire to keep going. Some people have the willingness, others find every excuse to run away from the opportunity for enlightenment. Some people are capable of learning, some are not. That is their problem and it is short sighted of them to blame progress as an excuse for their own lack of ability.

Mike K