Boomer techno-love goes bust

It’s a sign of age, I suppose, but I’ve come to a point in my life when technology doesn’t thrill me like it used to.

This is a curious admission, and one that I never thought I’d make. Up until a few years ago, after all, I could still greet with enthusiasm the newest chip-driven innovation on the market, believing that any cool, high-tech gadget had the power to make my life easier and more rewarding.

But the other day, while watching my teenage daughter at the computer at home, I realized I was well on my way to becoming a techno-fogy – not an old techno-fogy, perhaps, but at least a middle-aged one. On the screen was a jumble of boxes that would, if activated properly, transfer a collection of digitized music files onto the MP3 player that my daughter got for Christmas.

“Can you help me, Dad?” she asked, with one hand on the mouse and the other holding the tiny gadget that was wired into the computer. “I can’t get the program to work.”

Not so long ago, I would have known not only what the heck MP3 stood for, but exactly how to make the thing sing. I would have bought one for myself, for that matter, and then eagerly sat down with the manual until I had it mastered. This time, I browsed in confusion through a few pages of cryptic instructions and then set the booklet down.

“Sorry, kid,” I told my daughter with a shrug, “but you’re on your own.”

Within 10 minutes, of course, she was dancing around the kitchen to the digitized hip-hop streaming into her headphones from that magic little box. It turned out to be a snap, said my daughter, who offered to walk me through it. But I wasn’t interested in the novelty. I was content to let the musical wonders of MP3 technology pass me by. Frankly, I simply didn’t have the energy to tackle the intricacies of yet another gadget, no matter how cool it seemed.

According to a recent Associated Press story, lots of baby boomers like me are starting to burn out in our efforts to keep up with the tidal wave of technology that engulfs us. We’re certainly not technophobes, having spent the last two decades embracing just about every revolutionary product to come along.

We happily packed up our college record collections when cassettes appeared, then we shelved our obsolete cassettes without a whimper when CDs took over. As computers began to transform our homes and workplaces, we jumped right in and learned all the skills we needed to make the systems hum. Many of us have even made cell phones essential to life, and can hardly remember a time when they weren’t.

Now, however, graying boomers are tiring of the tremendous learning curve that ever-evolving technology requires and the digital tyranny it brings. For the first time in our lives, we’re much less willing to run out and buy shiny new electronic gizmos that don’t offer great benefits or that demand hours of studying how-to books to make them work.

We’re satisfied with our old-fashioned CD players, our antiquated VCRs, and our primitive cell phones that do nothing more than allow us to converse with one another. We’ve bequeathed our once-limitless fascination with nonstop complexity to our children, who are rapidly leaving us in the dust just as we once ventured into cyberspace and left our own parents behind.

To this next generation, I say good luck and keep the innovations coming. Please be sure to e-mail us techno-fogies once in a while, though, in case we need you to stop by the house and help us with our new DVD machines.