Skills You Had Before The Internet

Pop Quiz CTL Subscribers. Put on your thinking caps and name a couple of skills you needed before the Internet and having a smartphone in your purse or pocket.

• Spelling – I can remember being a decent speller. Now I just ask Google or Alexa to spell a word.
• Arithmetic – With a calculator on every phone you can just type in or better yet just say “Ok Google add these numbers”.
• Maps- remember looking at a printed map for the directions . If you’re born before 1990 you may have never looked at a physical maps
• Libraries – This one is very sad for me because libraries and physical book stores were always a wonderful trip for me. Now a student can wait to the very last minute to do their assignments
• Writing printed (non email)  letters. The image of being a college freshman just flashed in my head. Coming down to the collection of dormitory mailboxes and getting that letter from home was a cherished experience.
• Typewriters. Taking a typing course in High School was a big bonus in searching for material now.
• Photo Albums:  The skill of filing has totally been replaced by digital photo albums and tags.

Summary: Although my life style and my ability to find information has greatly improved with the Internet. I think these are some of the down sides that have affected me.

• My handwriting has deteriorated. I don’t even enjoy writing.
• I am thoroughly addicted to my smartphone.
• My patience for listening  is at an all time low.
• I am too easily distracted.

What skills have you lost since the Internet is so much a part of our lives?

 

2018 Internet Trends Report

Mary Meeker’s report has just been released. Link at the bottom. Here are the highlights.

• Half the world population, or about 3.6 billion people, will be on the internet.
• U.S. adults are spending more time online thanks to mobile, clocking 5.9 hours per day in 2017 versus 5.6 hours in 2016.
• Voice technology is at an inflection point due to speech recognition hitting 95% accuracy and the sales explosion for Amazon Echo which went from over 10 million to over 30 million sold in total by the end of 2017.
•  Ecommerce growth quickens as now 13% of all retail purchases happen online and parcel shipments are rising swiftly, signaling big opportunities for new shopping apps.
• Freelancing: Employees crave scheduling and work-from-home flexibility, and internet discovery of freelance work led it to grow 3X faster than total workforce growth. The on-demand workforce grew 23% in 2017 driven by Uber, Airbnb, Etsy, Upwork, and Doordash.

 

Here’s Mary Meeker’s essential 2018 Internet Trends report

 

A Life In Six Words

In 2010 NPR’s “Talk Of The Nation” had a program called –

The next day I wrote the following:  “Brooklyn, Oswego, Brentwood, Oregon, married Sharon”.

Here is my new one for 2018

Brooklyn, Oregon, Sharon, Ecuadorian Resident, Salmon.

Here are ones from the broadcast that I found particularly interesting.

• Found on Craigslist: table, apartment, fiance.
• Hotel sex still rocks over fifty.
• Normal person becomes psychotic on Twitter.
• Full circle: morgue tech becomes obstetrician.
• So would you believe me anyway?
• Overworked and underpaid,
  Oversexed and underlaid.

What is your six word story?

 

Do You Know How To Say Popcorn In Spanish?

It depends on what country you are in. The other day I scared a local Cuencana while walking to Supermaxi. I was racking my brain to come up with the word for two days when at that moment my brain reminded me it was “canguil” and I proudly shouted it out.

So why mention canguil?  One of the proven ways to delay the onset of dementia is to learn a foreign language. Other methods are to play chess, bridge, quilt and a various other games that require critical thinking and memory recall.

I highly recommend the smartphone app “Pocket“. Besides, acting as a reservoir for your saved websites, the app suggests articles that may interest you based on your web browsing history.

Here was interesting article that I found on Pocket and the catalyst for this post.

Retirement Caused Brain Function To Decline

It’s a quick read and was actually very promising for all of us who live in Ecuador and struggle for the right word for popcorn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beloit College Mindset List – Class of 2020

For the past 18 years Beloit College publishes 60 mindset examples of the entering freshmen. I found this year’s examples particularly interesting as I age and my grandchildren get closer to college age.

Here are seven unique examples:

• The United States has always been at war
• Each year they’ve been alive the U.S. population has grown by more than one million Latinos.
• If you want to reach them, you’d better send a text—emails are oft ignored.
• Bada Bing – Tony and Carmela Soprano and the gang have always been part of American culture.
• A Bush and a Clinton have always been campaigning for something big.
• Airline tickets have always been purchased online.
• Newt who?

You can see the complete list here

 

 

Flashback Friday – What’s Your Digital Brand

Pop Quiz  CTL readers… How many digital brands do you have?  Here are some common ones:

• Email
• Website
• Facebook
• Twitter

The other day I wanted to research a potential contractor for a computer job I needed to be completed. This person’s digital brand was scarce. That immediately set off red flags.

Please read my blog post from 2015. Do you have some other criteria for your personal digital brand

What’s Your Digital Brand?

 

How Will Our Lives Change In 20 Years

I am usually very skeptical when I read the following words “must read article”.  I started reading this with the expectation that I would be done in less than a minute. Double yowza – there are some great predictions. The following are the ones I found fascinating.

• Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.
• Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self driving cars will appear for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don’t want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving. Our kids will never get a driver’s licence and will never own a car.
• Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. Energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that can’t last. Technology will take care of that strategy.
• Health:  The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There are companies who will build a medical device (called the “Tricorder” from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breath into it.
• It then analyses 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medical analysis, nearly for free. Goodbye, medical establishment.
• If it doesn’t work with your phone, forget the idea. And any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed to failure in the 21st century.

Read the full article. I would love to get your feedback.

What Would Life Be Like Without The Internet (Part 1)

The initial sobering thought is that you would not be reading this post if there were no internet. The thought of  LWTI (Life Without The Internet) came to me in sort of a wave of experiences. The front edge of the wave led me to admit sometimes I use my smartphone and its connection to the Internet to avoid human contact. Yes, if I am restless at dinner or a Poker game, I take out my phone and check email or scan world headlines. Every time my phone vibrates I take it out, often interrupting an ongoing conversation. In short, I am addicted to the stimulation of the Internet.

What was life like before the Internet?

1. Communication – There were F2F meetings, often requiring time- consuming travel to meetings. There were long distance phone calls. There was snail mail. In the 1960’s, I can remember patiently waiting in my college dormitory post office to find out if my family’s care package shipped 10 days ago had arrived today.
2. Banking -Ah, the days of standing in line to make a deposit or to pay a vendor. It was licking a stamp on an envelope and mailing the bill to the provider of your services.
3. Libraries – Walking to the library and hoping that the reference book you needed for your report was available and paying the library fines often.
4. Movies – As a child, Saturday afternoons were special for my bother and me. I fondly remember going to a matinee where admission and popcorn for the both of us cost less than a dollar.
5. Employment. There was no such thing as working online. You dressed for work. You commuted to work. More often than not you worked from 8-5 and commuted home.
6. Television. For the first 18 years of my life there was one T.V. in the house. We watched together as a family and of course there was no streaming, Youtube or viewing on a tablet or smartphone.

Was life slower, better, more enjoyable before the Internet? For my grandchildren there are no comparisons. All of their lives they have experienced Email, Google, Facebook, iPhones and ordering from Amazon and receiving their products in the same day.  They don’t know the meaning of film and typewriters.

Could we exist today without the Internet? Does the child growing up in the Internet age lack personal communication skills? Do we as adults keep our personal communication skills sharp?

In Part 2, I will discuss a need to return to some of the skills we had before the Internet.

 

Virtual Reality

A great parting link from Obama Administration. A Virtual Tour of the WhiteHouse.

Friends In Foreign Places

Yesterday Sharon and I had the privilege of attending the launch party of the Kindle Anthology – Friends In Foreign Places. All the proceeds for this book go to the Ecuador Earthquake Relief Fund.  Sharon and I have stories in the 5 volume anthology.

• Sharon: “I Never Met A Stranger”
• Lenny: “My Teacher, My Friend”

So for $5.99 you get to help the Earthquake victims and read 36 great short stories. Such a deal.

Here is the link to purchase the book.