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Our assignment for this blog was to interview someone over age 55 and talk with them about their attitudes on technology and social media. I chose to interview my dad. My dad is 74 years old. He was born a few years before the start of WWII. He grew up in Las Vegas Nevada. His prompted his dad to have a phone installed. My dad has not been without one since. In the early days it was a “party line” phone, you called the operator and had them connect calls for you,

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 and when you got an incoming call you had to listen for the correct ring. When I was a kid I remember our ring was 3, it had to ring three times before we could answer, three close rings together. In the 1960’s party lines were already obsolete, but our phone exchange where we lived was one of the last one to change over to dial telephones.  My father was really happy to get a phone as a kid, but he still mostly ran over to his friends’ houses to get up with them. Now as an adult, my father has a land line phone, and a cell phone. He did not get his cell until 2001. My girlfriend at the time convinced him it would be a good thing to have. Two days after he got his first cell, he got into an accident and was injured. He used his phone to call for help and call home to let my mother know what had happened. Now he won’t leave the house without it. He started using the internet and e-mail in ’99. He really enjoys this medium of communication. His attitudes towards most social media is rather pedestrian, he does not want anything to do with it. He would still much rather call his buddies, and talk rather than log in to Facebook.  He got an account last year to vote in the American Idol stuff. He saw that he could get more votes for his favorite performers with Facebook, so he created an account. He logs in about once a week, and looks for messages, then he’s done for the week. My dad thinks that social media is making it easier for people not to connect on a personal level, doing it online leaves it at casual. As for me, I don’t believe that. I do feel that sometimes we, especially those of us that have come of age since the invention of such things spend far too much time this way. We may just be better off if we turn off, log out and go visit a friend. A thought my dad readily agrees with.