For a guy who, up until the pandemic, waited patiently in the queue to update his bank passbook every month, my almost overnight transition to digital payments was quite unexpected. I took to mobile money like a duck to water, though a duck’s more natural when swimming in water than I'm GPay-ing my way at the barber’s.
New technology, I have since found, is not as scary as it may seem at first and it doesn’t change everything for the worse. In fact, it actually makes things more smooth and efficient.
I should know better. As a journalist in the 80s and 90s, I made the periodical transition from manual typewriters to electric typewriters to computers and laptops with ease and, if I may, somewhat unconsciously. I worked faster, and I was more productive.
I say unconsciously because after our initial resistance to it, we accept the inevitability of change—smart technologies, for instance—and embrace it both at a personal and professional level. And the next thing we know, we’re better and stronger for it.
We learn something new and exciting. We adapt to it. We build resilience. We make progress. And we succeed.
It can be a little anxiety-producing to deal with change, especially technological change. But if we give ourselves time, we can harness that change and master it rather than have it master us. I think about that when I think about the leap from paper maps to satnav/GPS systems.
Margot, thank you for commenting. I agree, once we let go of our initial resistance to technology, as with so many things in life, we realise that our apprehensions were misplaced. Technology, in most cases, makes life easier.
It can be a little anxiety-producing to deal with change, especially technological change. But if we give ourselves time, we can harness that change and master it rather than have it master us. I think about that when I think about the leap from paper maps to satnav/GPS systems.