Technology Discord

Family protocol problems

We each have our own personal trysts and triumphs with technology, but spare a thought for the bigger picture. Technological development is so rampant, and we all embrace different aspects at such a different pace, that communication protocols just can't keep up. Without any hard and fast rules to guide us, it's an inevitable recipe for discord and frustration, particularly with family and peers.

Confess! You've rolled your eyes. Definitely at your parents, inevitably about a friend who hasn't moved with the times like you have, and certainly at your kids, who drive you nuts because they have gone overboard with it all.

Somehow, I can almost tolerate someone who just refuses to use the technology more so than one who gets it, but then doesn't use it ‘properly.'

‘Why do you turn off your mobile phone?' I ask my mother in frustration.

‘Well, we were home, and so we didn't think anyone would be calling us.'

‘But we don't know where you are! You don't unplug your home phone just because you don't think anyone's going to call!'

This lack of logic is not, however, the sole domain of the ‘older generation.'

I could say to any number of people my own age ‘If you only check your e-mail once a month, then don't give me your e-mail address! I mean, you don't check your letterbox only once a  month!'

Possibly I should be relieved that this peer frustration is not limited to my own generation. My teenage daughter shakes her head over friends who can't set up their own Hotmail account, or MySpace layout.

But it's the inter-generational family issues that have the potential for the most discord.

My parents disappoint me because, while they have the internet, they refuse to embrace the immediacy and convenience of sharing photos online. We live 600km away, and so, call me crazy, but I thought that they would love being able to regularly view photos of the grandkids online. Not so. My mother would rather wait months to shuffle through an envelope of prints than to check out the photos on the home computer, at full screen resolution, and then give me an order for prints.

And then there's the ultimate disharmony as we each make choices as to our preferred method of communication. Me? I love that with e-mail I can multi-task. I can yell at the kids, duck in and out to the kitchen, and not have my TV shows interrupted. These days I tend to eschew the phone but I can tell that my mother hates it when I use e-mail. In return I bristle if she phones when I'm in the middle of something and then seems to get uptight when I cut her short, or suggest I ring her back.

Meanwhile, extended family members can't seem to grasp the fact that e-mail, unlike the phone, doesn't require an immediate response. That they don't actually need to respond the minute they get an e-mail with the somewhat hurtful reply that they don't have time to be looking at my photos right now. Don't they realise that the beauty of e-mail is that they can actually be far more diplomatic than if we were in the same room ?

I might consider myself reasonably savvy when it comes to computers, but the current point of discord in our immediate family is the different way in which our two generations view instant messaging (IM). We all use it, but have a totally different concept of the protocol. The Daddy and I (and our IM peers) understand implicitly that if the other person doesn't answer they are obviously ‘afk'. In either a work or home environment it is implicitly understood that you might be up and down from the keyboard all the time and no-one takes offence.

Tell that to my kids, who, if called to set the table, or come to dinner, insist on taking five minutes to politely inform each of the dozen or so contacts they might be chatting to on IM as to their movements and likely return.

When this modern day deference to their peers outrates good old-fashioned respect for their parents, I don't need to tell you that sparks really do fly around here.