I suppose that one day I will tell our grandchildren about the “old days” when we first got a modem for our computer that used the telephone lines and made strange sounds. I used to read my email messages and compose responses offline and then, usually at night when I was getting ready for bed, connect the modem and let it upload and download messages while I slept. It could take four hours or more to handle a day’s worth of email messages. And I was considered to be quite a bit ahead of the technology curve. At the time there weren’t that many people using email. Our church had just formed a primitive list serve that we called a network.

That was a long time go - at least in terms of technology.

Yesterday when I arrived at the office, I took out my laptop computer, as is my practice, and started to review email messages that had come during my commute. The guest network at the church, however, was offline and so I had to log onto the office network. The office network, however, rejected my password even though I knew the correct password and have used it to connect multiple times. My computer remembers passwords for often used and trusted networks, but it couldn’t get logged onto the network. Often when I have computer problems the solution is to walk away from the computer for a while, so I closed my laptop and turned to the desktop computer supplied by the church for our office. That computer worked for email messages and I used it to compose a few documents including a syllabus for a class that will begin in a couple of weeks.

Connection to the Internet was spotty all day at the church. Sometimes the desktop computer wouldn’t connect. Our laptops would be connected one moment and then disconnect without warning. We were able to have our regular staff meeting over Zoom, which meant that there were at least 5 computers in the building that were connecting to the Internet simultaneously - something that normally is no problem.

Not long after the staff meeting we decided to come home and work because we weren’t experiencing any connectivity problems there. We finished our emails and other tasks after driving home.

I am still a bit surprised when I get impatient over the speed of the internet. I know that I have gotten used to being able to connect whenever I want and to obtain a high speed Internet connection in a lot of different places. I can use my cell phone as a mobile hot spot to upload my journal while on the road and in recent years, even though I have traveled quite a bit, I rarely miss uploading my journal a soon as I finish writing.

I’m still adjusting to things like Zoom staff meetings. In fact the walls at our office are pretty thin. We can hear people talking in the offices adjacent to ours. Yesterday, I had the computer speakers turned up and the person in a neighboring office asked me to turn them down because they were making it hard for her to participate in the meeting, hearing the sound of her own voice from our speakers when she talked. I would much rather have a face-to-face meeting.

I’m not alone in my sentiment. I recently read an article about workers who have returned to the office after working from home only to discover that more and more meetings are taking place over the Internet. They may be back in the office, but the work patterns established while working remotely have continued, sometimes living workers wondering why they have come tot he office in the first place, when all they do all day long is attend Zoom meetings.

The pandemic has changed work life routines for many people and it appears that things are not going back to the way they were before the outbreak.

I’m learning to adapt to the change, but I'm pretty sure that I’ll probably end up boring my grandchildren withe stories of the good old days. On the other hand, I don’t remember being bored by my grandparents when they told us about the time before they had automobiles and telephones.

I suspect, however, that Amazon’s announcement of their new Astro robot doesn’t creep out my grandchildren the way it does me. I have embraced a lot of technology in my time, but I’m not eager to have one of those in my home. We don’t have a smart speaker in our home. The idea of a machine that is listening to everything I say bothers me. I have enough trouble with the digital assistant on my phone, which will occasionally interrupt a conversation with an unwanted response. Now Amazon is expecting people to pay between $1,000 and $1,500 for a machine that not only listens, but “looks” by making video recordings. The thought of such a device roaming around my home is not the least bit appealing to me.

Then again, we don’t have a home security system in our house. We don’t have a smart doorbell that takes pictures of the people on the other side of the door. I can’t check on my home by using my cell phone. There are plenty of technologies that seem to me to be unnecessary for my lifestyle.

I have a tablet computer that I can use to read books, and I use it quite a bit. I like being able to have multiple books in one lightweight device. But at the end of the day, when I’m winding down, I still prefer to have a paper book in my hands. There is something very satisfying about having a hard cover book to read. Perhaps all of the books in my house seems a bit “old fashioned” to our grandchildren. On the other hand, three of them have a librarian for a father, so they are familiar with books. He, of course, spends his days working with computers and digital resources. Libraries are vastly different these days than they used to be.

I suppose the day will come when someone wants to use a robot to check on me as I age. I’m not looking forward to that day. I really think that little Amazon device is creepy.