Episode 9: Let's Talk About Tech

In this episode of You Still Have Time, hosts Hope and Harold tackle a topic that affects everyone—especially as we age: technology. With their signature honesty and humor, they remind listeners that they’re not tech experts, but everyday people navigating the same challenges many face when trying to keep up with an increasingly digital world.

The conversation centers on one key idea: maintaining independence. As more services—from healthcare to banking to communication—move online, having even basic tech skills is no longer optional. Hope and Harold emphasize that while no one needs to adopt every new gadget or platform, understanding fundamental tools like smartphones, email, text messaging, and search engines can make life significantly easier and help avoid reliance on others.

They walk through practical, real-life examples of essential skills, including:

•  Using devices (phones, tablets, computers) confidently 
•  Sending and receiving emails and text messages 
•  Navigating the internet safely (including avoiding scams like phishing) 
•  Leveraging tools like video calls, GPS, and apps for transportation or health monitoring 

The hosts also explore more advanced—but increasingly common—technologies such as smart home devices, telemedicine, and online banking, while acknowledging their own hesitations in adopting some of them.

Importantly, they address the emotional side of learning technology: the fear, frustration, and even embarrassment that can come with it. Their message is clear—learning doesn’t stop with age, and asking for help is part of the process.

Finally, they offer encouragement and resources for getting started, from local libraries and community centers to organizations like AARP, reinforcing that support is available for anyone willing to take that first step.

Bottom line: Technology may feel overwhelming, but embracing even a small part of it can help you stay connected, capable, and independent.

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Transcript

 Hello and welcome to You Still Have Time. We are your host, I'm Hope. And I'm Harold. And of course we welcome all of our regular listeners and of course we welcome and thank all of you, , especially those of you who might be listening for the first time. Today, we are going to talk about technology. , We kind of. Name this episode. Let's talk about tech. Get it. Okay. Not funny anyway. , But first I, I'd like to make , a disclaimer that we frequently make, , on our podcast, and that is we are not experts. We do research. , But we're not experts in anything except getting old. I mean, might be experts in that. And there's another thing that we want to, we are not trying to. Criticize people who have been reluctant to adopt some of the new technologies because quite frankly, we ourselves have not been receptive to all the new technology. But what this podcast aims to do, is to allow you or inform you of things that you should investigate if you're not already taking. , Look at, because they can really help. They can save you some time. They can help you to recoup some independence. You might not have to ask your neighbor or your child, or your grandchild or your friend. And some of these things are not quite as difficult as you may think. Right. And, in planning this, we always have issues, thinking of topics to discuss on the podcast, but we, ourselves and, and people around us have varying. Levels of engagement with technology and use technology in different ways. But the, the thing Harold mentioned, independence, and certainly as we grow older, we don't want to have to depend on someone else all the time to do things for us. We are used to doing things for ourselves. So some of these things can help maintain that independence, as Harold said, the other thing. And, and Harold pointed this out to me in our discussion, before the this episode, is that we're gonna have to adapt at to some, at some level because. Things are not going back. We're not going back to the days when we dial a phone, when we call up someone and a, and a live, a company and a live person answers. That's very, very rare these days, and most companies are pushing everyone toward. Interacting with them online so we could be at a real loss if we are not at least familiar with some of these things. As Harold said, nobody's saying you have to adopt everything, but there, there are some very basic things we think that maybe everybody should be comfortable with. What, one of the things that I think about is I, I've heard it from. Some folks in our peer group that, well, this is the way I've always used to do it. Okay, that's great. I remember when we used to dial a phone. Nobody's dialing the phone now, and just because you used to do it that way doesn't mean that the rest of the world is going to stop and do it the way you, you used to do it. And, I just think that it's important that we at least consider, maybe you don't, as a hope said, you don't have to adopt all of these new technologies. We certainly haven't. We certainly have not. But there are some that will, number one, there's some that make your life a lot easier. And number two. I think that you are gonna find yourself really isolated and almost unable to complete some of the tasks that you used to complete because you can't do it the way you used to do it anymore. And don't be afraid of, investigating and perhaps learning new things. We've been learning new things all of our lives, those of us who are in our sixties and seventies and eighties and beyond. We've learned things. All of our lives, and there's no reason to stop. Now, you should not. I, I, I shouldn't say should, but you, but you shouldn't be afraid of at least investigating you. You remember you. Now, here we go with some, you remember when they went from the rotary phone to touch tone? Absolutely. I mean, you had a princess phone. Yeah. You had the, you had the rotary phones, and now you're going to touch tone. Now, I'm sure none of you have rotary phones. That's because they don't work anymore. Right. And it's going to be the same way with some of the technologies that are going to eliminate some of the procedures or some of the things you used to do. So you might as well, I guess what, what this whole podcast is aimed at. There are ways that you can acquire the skills that will help. You get used to learn to, to acquire some of these new skills, right. Anyway, yes. One of the, one of the basics, I mean, and, and many of these things that we're gonna be talking about, we have experienced it through our, either ourselves or our friends, and we just say, okay. Basic skills everybody needs to be familiar with. Uh, a whether you have a laptop, a tablet, or a computer. Or a phone. Or a phone. Just some basic skills turning it on and off. I know I, now, I know for some of you some of these things sound quite pedestrian, but there are some in this. Some people who are listening to this podcast for whom some of these things are not as simple as they seem to you, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, I know someone who really got a cell phone and didn't really know how to. Turn the sound off. So if we were, in a movie or in the theater or someplace where you didn't want your, your phone going off that needed, it needed to be quiet or church, they just didn't know how to, how to turn the volume down so that it wouldn't interrupt people. Now that's very simple and, and yes, you know, she was new. To, you know, having a cell phone and all of that, and yes, learned, but there are other things that are just that basic that some people still don't feel that comfortable with, using a mouse or a touch screen. these are things that. Uh, that we all should be able to do because you don't want to have to ask people, continue to ask people to do things for you. I, I think that some of the devices, so I know that it's easy to go out and buy a cell phone because they try to sell it to you every place you go. But learning the, what the buttons on your cell phone are for. Mm-hmm. Being able, like hope just described, turning the volume up or down as opposed to just turning it off, uh, making it brighter so that you can see making the text bigger so that you can read it. I mean, I know for some of you, you're like, this is elementary, but believe me. We are not saying this because we think it, we have encountered situations where people really do not understand some of the basic operations of their, their tools. And this goes for any age. we have relatives in their nineties who use cell phones. So, it's just a kind of a fact of life at, at this point learning to, to use search engines like Google. we call Hope the Google Queen because I Google everything whenever I'm with people and they say, oh, I wonder how they do that. And I always say, Google it, because there's so much information out there now. Disclaim, the, the everything that you read, every, all the information that you get on Google is not always true, but, but certainly it's a place to start to look for information. Uh, nobody has encyclopedias anymore. At least I don't think so. And if you do have encyclopedias, that information is probably very dated. So, uh, even, even the old information, if you're looking about something in the 18th century, they've found new things about living in the 18th century that may differ than what you read in an encyclopedia. Now, one of the things I think that we all must absolutely, I'll underline it and put it around quotation marks, email, email, learning how to send emails. Learning how to open your email forward. Emails, text messages. Folks, today, young people, even some old people are not gonna call you. They're not, they're not gonna call you. I know some of us say, oh, I, I, I wanna talk to a person that's great that you wanna talk to someone and, and we are talking about your family. Right. Okay. Then they're not gonna call you either it's an email or it's a text message. For young people, it's more likely text. They text everything. Right. And yeah, it can be annoying and yes, it is annoying. Sometimes you wanna hear someone's voice and you know, and we do, we make the call and say, Hey, I just want to hear your voice, to know that you're still there, not just these words on the screen, but I. Again, these are changes that we kind of have to adapt to because the world is not going to change. Go back for us and how often have we, I'm sure each one of us has heard of a situation where I didn't even know they were trying to reach me. They were sending you an email and you didn't, oh, I only check. I don't hardly ever check my email. Well, that's why you didn't know about this appointment that you missed, because that's how they're going to reach you. Oh, I had an appointment for a doctor and they needed to change the time or date. They sent you an email or a text message. They didn't call you and they won't call you. Yeah, I, you know, it, it. I guess it's sad, but I'm sure that, you know, when we went from radio to tv, you know, some people missed radio when we went. Um, well, I don't think anybody missed getting up and changing the channels for themselves. Remote controls where we got pretty popular pretty quickly. Oh, you that was, you don't have to get up. That was the kid's job to change the channels. This is true. Go and change channels from two to four. Well, you only had four channels, so it wasn't, it wasn't a lot. Um, of course, you know, with this, there are some things that you have to be aware of and that you have to look out for. Um. I don't know how many of you are, are familiar with the word phishing? That's P-H-I-S-H-I-N-G. Uh, you know, we're, we're scam artists out there. People are sending you something. Oh, you owe this bill, or you, or call us. You know, you have to call this number. All of those things. Yes. You have to be careful. You have to be suspicious. Right, right. And if you don't know who is sending you an email or a text message. Hey, delete it. Get rid of it. Don't open it. Don't, don't answer it. Right? Unless it's familiar to you. Don't click on everything. Don't click on everything. I mean, if, if it's coming from, X, y, z, uh, hospital service or something, that's something a associated with one of your. Your doctors, they belong to some medical group. Yes. But when you see these things, oh, you owe or we have money for you. All of those things. Those things, those scams that they used to just do over the phones, now they're doing, via email and text messages. Ano another category of digital tools and, and I know some of us, quite frankly, I'm not that. On things like, the TikTok or the WhatsApp. I'm a big YouTube person. I love YouTube because if I wanna learn how to do something, whether it be changing the oil in my car or even fixing a flat tire, I can go to YouTube and someone with the exact same car that I have will show me how to do that. FaceTime. Sometimes you need to be able to explain something to someone. And you just can't do it over the phone or over the email or over the text. FaceTime and let you show them, look, look at this FaceTime. I'm gonna show you. I'm going to direct you all of the steps that are necessary to complete that task and zoom. And and, and many of us got familiar with like FaceTime and Zoom during COVID because we were really isolated then. And that was the only way in some cases, to keep in touch to see your family to, , we used to have game nights over Zoom, it was, it was a scary time. And those are the times when you wanna be connected to people. So those technologies were available, thankfully, and, and they still have value. It's a, it's a wonderful way to keep in touch with people. I know many people who have weekly family meetings 'cause families are scattered all over the country or world and they wanna see each other and catch up on things. Now there's a, there's a category of technology that neither hope nor I are. Have adopted quite yet, but I know some of our friends, and those are the things like, uh, Alexa and Siri and Google Nest, and I guess, yeah, I, I, I think we had one of them. Somebody gave me one. Yeah, we had Alexa or something, but we never used it, but, but we never really used it. I, I see the value in it. It's just that we are too lazy or cheap or whatever, whatever it is. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I guess, I mean, I, I know a number of our friends have, , you could hear them while they're talking to you and they'll say, Alexa, turn off the lights or something, and. I'm not, I don't, we just haven't done it yet. We haven't done it. That's not to say that we won't. Yeah, because certainly, I've had, three, three, a joint replacement surgeries and I mean, Harold luckily was here, but, hey, if, if I was in the house alone. I'm sure I could have used some of those things to, to turn off the light or turn on the light or turn the TV off or see who's at the door. Know things like ring. Right, right. Exactly. The, the, the doorbells or, or, you know, those things certainly are, are of value to, you don't have to worry about, you know, actually going to the door to see who's there because you have these tools that'll help you monitor what's going on. And another category are the health monitoring, uh, uh, apps. During this, this past winter, um, I think I said this on an earlier podcast where I was going out walking and I happened to slip and fall and my Apple Watch said, it looks like you have fallen. Should I call 9 1 1? And I said, no, what do you call by one? But, but I might have needed that. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I, I wear a Fitbit. I'm, I'm not, I'm not as diligent as Harold is with exercising, but it's, it's good. I mean, it keeps track of your heart rate, you know, Hey, listen, as we grow older, we. Have all kinds of different issues, um, medical and orthopedic and all of those things. So anything that can be helpful reminding us to take medication. If you have to take medication on a schedule and you have like an Apple watch or even a Fitbit, you can set alarms so that. They will tell, or Alexa will tell you, Alexa, please remind me at three o'clock that I need to take this pill. Those kinds of things. As I said, we haven't gotten to the Alexa and and Siri and all of that yet, but not to say that we won't. Navigation tools are a category that whether you are a driver or not, I'm sure that you have or you should have, or you will have taken advantage of. Anybody who drives, if you're not using GPS or Waze or Google Maps, I'm, I, I don't know how many folks are doing. Well, if, if you're driving in your neighborhood, you don't need all of that stuff. Yeah. But not everybody stays in the neighborhood all the time. Right. You know, you drive outside your neighborhood and I doubt if anybody's using a paper map anymore. Yeah. Even though I love paper maps. Right. But I think most of us, so that's one thing. And if you're not a driver. Things like Uber or Lyft, which are on your phone, which are an app on your phone. You can't call 'em from your landline or can you, can you call 'em from your landline? I don't know. I doubt it because they would be, do they have a phone number? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if they do, but these are things that again, uh, you can take advantage of if you understand the technology. Uber is great. I mean, I mean, I know the prices are going up, but to be able to just say, I want to pick up here and I want to go here, and someone will come and. You know who they are. As a matter of fact, you could see where they, you could track them, see where they are, you know, what their car looks like. You know what the person's name is, you know what the license plate is. I mean, it's a great function. And I think that, uh, these are the types of things where I say technology is certainly advantageous if you live in a major city. You don't have to go out on the street corner and put your finger up and wait for a, a cab to come and. While Harold was talking, I Googled, can you call Uber and order an Uber? And yes, you can call to order an Uber in the US without the app. And they have their number 1, 8, 3, 3, use Uber. Okay. And allows you to order. So, okay. For those of you who aren't comfortable with having an app on your phone, yeah. But. You need your phone. Yeah. And this is what you can call from home. I, oh, I want Uber to pick me up. To take me to, I don't know. The airport or to the mall. To the mall. Okay. But if you wanna get back Right, you better have a cell phone. Right. And, and know that number to call because you know there aren't any public phones anymore. That is correct. So, we are gonna start to wrap this whole conversation up, and I'm sure some of you said, okay, you've talked about a lot of different technological things, so how do we find out about it? How do we get training? How do we learn about them? Because I don't have anybody here to teach me this, and, and I don't even know where to start. Funny you asked that question, so I'm sure. All of us have heard of a A RP. If you have not heard of a a RP, if you do not, uh, or if you are not an A A RP member, that is something I would encourage you now. Absolutely. We, we don't get paid by a RP or anything like that. They have their own podcast and you should listen to that too. Senior Planet there, I even knew the name. Yeah. Um, but A A RP is an incredible resource for older people and. They're a trustworthy resource at that. So I would encourage all of you, and, and at 50 a a RP sends you notifications. So I, some of our kids have already gotten, notices from a A RP. Yeah, it might be members of A-A-R-P-I. I remember when we first got notification from A A RP and we were reluctant because as, as we've aged. You were reluctant to accept the fact that you have aged, so A A RP was always, uh uh, it was something that you associate with old people, right? No, there's plenty of valuable information. And, and the, and it is for old people too. It is. Well, we're old. Well, we're old people, but there's certainly many places in your local community. I, that's the place to start. The place where you're most familiar with your library. I know I've said this before on on different episodes. We did an episode about technology, I think before. , And your local library, I know ours has tech training. Most local libraries have tech training, senior centers, senior centers and community centers. Uh, there's senior net.org organization that provides training goodwill. Uh, it's called, I think it's g gcf global.org. Another one. Okay. Classes that 2000 classes, uh, of all types, computer basics and getting started with technology. Yeah, of course you might have to help. You need help if you are not familiar with that, to log on to some of these things. But that's your first step to learning, a, a new skill. I think that we've covered pretty much all of the bases. Oh, one category, we did two categories. Actually, we didn't talk about online banking. Oh, no. And we didn't talk about. Medicine, uh, healthcare telemedicine. During Zoom, during Zoom, during COVID, uh, many of you may have had telemedicine visits, so, uh, you couldn't get to the doctor. The doctor couldn't get to, well, the doctors don't come to us anymore, but you couldn't get to the doctor and. Interact with the doctor, over your computer or even over your phone. that making appointments, I think I said that in the teaser that we did for this. This is, you don't make appointments by. Call, I mean, you can still for some places call and make an appointment with your doctor, but usually you get the recording and then they put you on hold and then they said, oh, you can go online and make your appointment. Right. And they give you, an a website address. The systems really make it, they make sort of push you towards not speaking to a human. Because it's cheaper. Yeah. They can eliminate another job. They, unfortunately, they can eliminate another job. And yes, we would all like to speak to a human being, someone that can answer our questions right there when we have them, when they occur to us. But as we said earlier, things are not likely to go backwards. And I guess that's the whole point of this conversation. For us as we age not to be, sort of. Eliminated or isolated. Isolated from what's going on, the things that we need, you need to order a prescription refill, right? You can go on your CVS app and press refill and and go and pick it up. And now I know they have this at CV s's. They change when you go to pick up your prescription, now they have a little screen there that you have to fill out, fill out, it's, it's, it's, we are not going back to pen and paper. Right. Um, it, oh, another tool I just thought of as hope is the scanner. How many times have you gone someplace and they say, oh, just scan the QR code, and how many of us are like, uh, does my phone have a scanner? How do I, how do I use it now? I know I've been reluctant. I was gonna say, I'm slow. To use it because every time I bring my scanner and try to scan a QR code, I usually get an ad. And then once I get into the ad, I'm trying to figure out how do I get out of this ad? And it's just annoying, but I'm noticing more and more that they're expecting you to scan even on TV where we have, 'cause we cut the cable. I think we talked about that on a previous episode and. They want you to scan the QR code on tv. Yep. They want you to scan qr QR codes. Uh, we didn't talk about online banking. Um. You know, if you, well, first of all, if you re, if you're receiving social security check, you know, that goes automatically into your bank account. They don't send checks anymore. Uh, but do you use an ATM? I mean, we know people who still go to the bank and stand online to cash checks to take money out. Um, certainly ATMs are a convenience that. I just don't, no, you don't go into banks to, to talk to people anymore. I mean, you do. I mean, there are certain circumstances where you have to, but I. To make it easier for you, we are just talking about things that, that will kind of keep you engaged, keep you in, in the mix of things, and, and keep you from being isolated and dependent. Uh. On other people to do everything for you. Nobody wants to be in that position. I think. I think that if, if you get anything out of this podcast, we are not trying to criticize you for not adopting a new technology. What we are saying is that as we age, we want to maintain our independence, and if you're not going to. Adapt or change With these technological advances, you are going to be dependent upon someone to do things for you because and then I'm sorry, you, you just won't be able to do it on your own. And they're not always gonna be available to you. So I hope this, that I, I know it can be scary, it certainly can be frustrating, it can be annoying, all of those things. But I think that if you haven't taken the plunge, the step if, if you know a couple of basic things. But find yourself needing people to help you navigate through some other things. Maybe there are some simple things that you can learn to do on your own, and once you become comfortable with that, maybe you could go to the next level and try and try different things using technology. don't be afraid to ask. I think that's the a big hurdle that some of us, we don't wanna show that we don't know, but. When you're writing things out longhand as opposed to using text to, I mean, I know, I, I maybe text to, uh, what is that? Voice to text might be a little advanced. I've never used that. Well, but, but, but there are things, don't be afraid to ask. And we keep trying to close this, this topic, but Harold just said that for those of us, as we grow older. we develop disabilities. Maybe we don't see as well as we used to. Maybe we don't hear as well as we used to. And there are technologies out there that can help us. Something like voice to text. Maybe, maybe your, your hands are arthritic and you can't type anymore voice to text can, can help you with that. maybe you don't see as well as you used to. in enlarging things on your, on your television screen using closed captions because maybe you don't hear as well as you used to and you have it up loud and, you know, people complaining, why is it so loud? So you, you know, you use closed captions. All of these things are there to serve us. And, and as I said at the very beginning. We have been learning things all of our lives. You don't get to an age where you stop learning, you just continue learning. That's, that's what it's all about. So I hope that that we've. Giving you something to think about and that we've, we've given you some inspiration maybe. So please follow us on wherever you listen to podcasts. We are on YouTube, Spotify, uh, apple Music. You can send us an email at. You still have time podcast@gmail.com. You can leave us a voicemail message@speakpipe.com and the link will be in the show notes and just just. Don't be afraid of technology. No, because we are still gonna be around for a while. And though we want you to maintain your independence as long as you possibly can. Yeah. And if you're listening to this podcast and you know someone who's not listening, but. Needs to hear what we just said. , Let them listen to your, the podcast on your phone. Yeah, yeah. Share, share the podcast. Share, share. Yes. That's, that's the, uh, that's what I was trying to get to, to share. So, uh, you still have time. That's what we keep saying. We still have time. Thank you for listening. We'll see you soon. Thank you very much. See you soon. Take care.