Good morning Ronni.

I'm not much of a techie. I don't have a TV anymore so the first thing I do in the a.m. is grab a mug of something and turn to my only computer, a desk top. In this order, I check
email, local news, weather, obituaries, national news and Rattle's poem of the day.

I don't use any social media. I write, poetry and essays, so I do a lot of research. I'll check out things I'm thinking of buying but don't buy online. I don't bank online or do anything that requires personal info even though I know it's already on other computer systems like hospitals, etc.

When necessary stuff is over, I play a few favorite games as a reward. Currently I'm in the process of getting an updated system. I just wrote a poem, Me Vs Computer with Linux, which details why I need one.

It's been about 3/4 of a century since I could change a real on a movie projector or replace a typewriter ribbon faster than most.

I use the internet a lot--on smartphone, tablet--laptop--and wear a fitbit (age 73) for motivation. I count Alexa and Echo among my friends. I like it because: any time a question comes up with my spouse, a friend, or myself, I can google it and find an answer, if not THE answer. Since I subscribe to news sites, I like getting instant news, as bad as it may be. I like seeing what's going on in my friends' and family's lives on facebook. I like posting tons of photos on FB, as I'm doing right now following a trip to Cuba. I like watching various videos and sometimes movies and can learn a lot from them. I like being able to order whatever I need or want with a few taps of the keys. I love being able to play Words with Friends or Solitaire before going to sleep. I love the internet! Thought I've a Twitter account, I don't use it as haven't felt the need; neither have I used instagram or snapchat--they just seem excessive. I do text on occasion and use instant messaging.

During the Cuba trip, however, I went through a 10 day internet/computer fast and loved that too. Whereas my roommate was always trying to find a place to connect, I was most happy to be electronics-free, including telephone.

I don't like the tons of ads, the fake news sites which continually pop up, trolling, the concern that I might be hacked. Since I'm able to go without it without pain, I feel the internet and I have a pretty good balanced relationship!

I'm on my notebook computer at least several hours / day, checking news sources, time goes by (of course), Facebook (love hate relationship here), doing odd-ball investigations, on-line shopping/bill paying/banking, and occasionally trying to track down old friends out of curiosity "what ever happened to" person du jour that might come to mind--I should have been a private detective. Mobile device serves the basics when not at home or at a wireless hot spot.

I worked in high technology sales for 40 years where electrical engineering was a requirement, although I was a Spanish Literature Major, and absorbed by osmosis a lot of technical skills and interest in computers, so I also like to keep them running without help, if I can because I like that challenge. I can't fix a leaky faucet, however, so I try to tell myself that in this computer age, I should count my blessings and not cry over lack of mechanical skills.

My mother who passed away in 2002 at 86 years old, warned me about germs coming in the mail--as she was told by her friends, computer virus of course, but she had no clue and she was clearly spared the digital age. Was she better off? I sometimes think so as she was a former farm girl from Nebraska and well skilled at old fashioned communications and loved to write letters and simply visit with friends. Now look at me (us)!!

Now, one of my biggest fears, moving forward, is how in the heck will I ever keep up with all of today's computer driven internet chores when I begin to lose my edge? I'll need to find both standard home care plus a digital assistant, I suppose. Cross that bridge when I come to it.

John

I guess I'm hooked! I do all the things mentioned but abstain from online dating (I have a wonderful partner. I don't need anyone but him!) And Twitter. I won't tweet! Lol

If I didn’t text or use Facebook I would not be in contact with my daughter and her family. They NEVER answer the phone and limit their Facebook updates. My grandson loves his grandpa’s car because it has WiFi. We get the weekend paper delivered but use the electronic versions during the week to reduce paper.

At 71 I am a tech old fart. I used punch cards and paper tape input. I used 8 inch floppy disks. I used computers that would fill the first floor of my house today. These days, I can still read program source code, use Linux, windows and MacOS. I provide remote help to friends and family. I use Feedly to keep track of new entries on websites because it saves time. Alexa controls my entertainment so I don’t have 10 remotes laying around. Facebook has outlived its usefulness. Twitter was useless it’s first day in public. I manage a couple of local community organization websites. I catch my news and state of the world each morning on my iPad. I publish a paper directory from my Windows laptop.

Tech has always been part of my life. I also have kids, adult now. I teach tai chi. I belong to a hiking club. I volunteer at an association that maintains trails at a local park. I work on a garden that’s been written up in magazines and been on tours. And people crab at me because I don’t carry,y cell phone everywhere I go. I can’t let tech rule my life.

Technology is my friend. Because of macular degeneration, reading print books does not feel as comfortable as it used to. I can increase the font size on my computers. I've got a laptop to take traveling and a great big desktop so I can see my photographs well. I'm a photographer and writer. Couldn't live without my wonderful Apple. I make videos for Youtube, which takes up less space than photo albums. I do just about everything financial on-line and write a lot using email. I submit photographs and essays on-line.

Have an iPhone which I use as a camera, GPS and just about anything but a phone.

I stream Acorn, Amazon, PBS, Netflix, NPR, and Pandora using a Roku. Rarely watch "live" TV.

I don't like Twitter but use Facebook a lot to learn what my friends are doing and where they are. I belong to several nature and photography facebook groups and have talented photographer friends who inspire me with their creativity. I hear about wonderful concerts and art events to attend and contests to enter.

I read news on-line because I have more control over what I am exposed to compared to watching even PBS shows on TV. I download podcasts via iTunes, mostly about science, photography and nature but I also enjoy hearing stories like The Moth and New Yorker.

When I am going to a free concert, I send a notice to ten people who live in my building, asking if anyone wants to go with me. The first three who write back go. I have no patience for people my age who say, "Oh no, I don't do email or use a computer." They are missing so much.

Has anyone watched Neflix's Halt and Catch Fire? It's an excellent, 4-season series about the beginning of The Internet of Things, set in the 80's. I realized, watching those 20-and 30-somethings in "1983", and realized that was us! Not only were we once that young and beautiful, but WE started it all.

I learned to type on a key-punch machine in the early 70's. I jumped onto AOL and on a cell phone as soon as they were "things." Although I'm no techie, I'm an early adapter, pedaling very hard and fast to keep up. My office job lets me take the old "paper ways" into "cloud ways," but I know more about those ancient, necessary programs like Word and Excel than anyone here. Oh, and I know how to spell without spell check, and I know where to put punctuation, which cannot be said for ANYONE here under 40.

Ordering online - ordering EVERYTHING online - has saved me in the last 14 months after spinal surgery. I rarely go to stores anymore, and love it. Order 5 cases of cat food, a 28 pound bag of litter, 12 rolls of paper towels, a used book on turquoise from Goodwill, new pajamas, and have them all dropped at my door 2 days later, with no shipping cost? I've had worse addictions.

I use my cell phone for almost everything, and my laptop for when I can't stand the tiny virtual buttons. I don't like Alexa, as I simply don't like to talk (well, unless it's to a cat.) I think Facebook tears more people apart than brings them together, and if I was ever going to Tweet...well, not going into that flaming t.Rump territory now. Pinterest is too much fun, saving pictures of food I'll never cook and quilts I'll never sew. Banking - all online; I don't even have paper checks any longer.

Interesting interview. Thanks for that.

The internet...ahh, love it! I've been online since 1995, when there was less space on a hard drive than on a usb or iphone; when dial-up was charged by the time you spent online! Ha, what an era.

The positive back then was that it seemed the users were educated, intelligent, articulate. Not a blanket statement, just what I thought. There were NO ads, no commercialization at that point. Email was a wonderful way to communicate. I learned to code HTML, designed my own webzine for my prose and poetry, as well as other writers' submission. And kept it up for at least ten years.

As the years passed, I noticed the commercialization in real time; a gradual trend that has now caused popups and distraction to the point you are barely able to read an article (but at least not on this site, thanks!). Plus, the more people who came online, it seemed the level of discourse went from interesting, open debate to shouting (in all caps) matches and the antagonism kept ratcheting up. Today, the original internet is hardly recognizable, especially with the advent of Facebook and social media, not to mention smartphones.

And yet, I still LOVE it! I can choose to tune out what I don't like, even though I do sometimes look at sites that have opposite political viewpoints just to see what is going on. I use Facebook for family updates, as well as my author following. I have been able to publish my fiction independent of a publisher via Amazon KDP. Even had a bestseller! So along with the bad comes the good.

Before the internet, I was mainly an introvert, bookish; but I always had penpals the old-fashioned way via the postal system. When I first got online, it was as if the internet had been designed just for us introverts/nerds who met like-minded people without meeting face-to-face.

Now I do almost everything online: banking (auto-pay bills); buy things (a lot via Amazon); research for my stories; communicate with friends; on and on. Every now and then, it does concern me that IF we ever lose access to the internet...a serious collapse will occur. The younger generations that grew up with tech simply have no idea how to function without it...and that, I guess, is the downside.

P.S. I also conduct a lot of personal business, correspondence, and banking online.

Interesting topic.

I have two laptops, one new, the other refuses to die.

Also an old HP mini with Linux. Use it at the library.

My iPad goes where I go. Research, news, writing, email, looking up people, videos, music, books, reviews.

Love Reddit- I read, but don't comment.

I know how to use Facebook and Twitter, am not into it.

Cell phone for texting, calling family.

I try to stay in the moment during these turbulent political days.

I didn't blog last couple months- traveling.

Am back in Montreal.

Snow is melting fast.

*
A big shout out to everyone we met on our Montreal - SPI, Texas road trip.

We witnessed many random acts of kindness along our route.

VIrginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Georgia.

South Padre Island Winter Texans.

Where have you been all my life?

Y'ALL ROCK!

I'm 74 and go back a long ways in technology. I use it now to secure remote contracts with selected clients whom I never meet, where there's only a digital trail and no paper and I get paid by EFT.

I also use the PM or DM feature on FB to communicate instantaneously with relatives and friends.

I play around 12 games of Scrabble on line daily.

I update my own blog.

And I read newspapers and other blogs.

Facebook has given me much needed help for many years when I put out an SOS to others. But I think that's a peculiarity of this huge province with its tiny population where literally everybody is on FB like a tribe.

I use Twitter to tweet outrage periodically.

XO
WWW

I'm 75 and love my Mac computer and iPhone 8. I have an account on Facebook because I had to have one at one point in time. But I might check it once a year. When I do I remember why I don't like it and don't use it. I have never tweeted, used instagram or any other social media (figuring they'd be even more disagreeable than Facebook).

I recently had my email account hijacked by Google Drive because my Google account had "filled it to capacity." They would gladly accept my paying for more room. In the mean time I could neither send nor receive email until I either deleted files or paid for more storage. Investigating has turned up the fact that Google Drive is backing up and synching everything I put in my computer and counting that against my email account storage. So far I've found no way to turn off "back up and synch" app because "it is in use." A CATCH 22 to make sure you never get out of Google Drive's tentacles FOR SURE! So far it looks like I have to entirely get out of Google Drive if I want to stop this insanity. All I ever wanted was an email account ...

I encountered the same type of Google situation when I was in Apple's iCloud and I got out of iCloud. Google Drive (another cloud) is even more insidious because it isn't transparent about what it is doing or how to just have what you want (as opposed to what they want) in your cloud.

I use my smartphone mostly to play PokemonGO, to make phone calls, to take wonderful photos, to keep my calendar and reminders straight, to use GPS on auto trips, occasionally to read a Kindle book, or identify a bird or plant by apps for that purpose. Though I could, I don't use my phone to deal with email. I use my computer for that.

I love that my computer can search for any info I might inquire about and give me multiple answers in seconds. I love that I can see how to do almost anything on YouTube. I love that I can compose letters, poetry and prose more elegantly than in the old paper and pen days. I love that I can store my photos on it, download what I want on it and upload what I want on it, as well as store the files I want to keep on it.

So I actually love both my phone and computer and I hate all forms of CLOUD at least as they exist now.

Like dkzody and others, I'm a tech person, having worked as a technician at Ma Bell for 30 years..on analog lines maybe, but that was the then.

I quit all social media about 3 years ago, including reddit, Quora, Facebook & Instagram.

When my grand daughter went to Southeast Asia 8 months ago, I loged back on to FB to keep in touch, but I was very glad to miss the election madness that consumed FB-my daughter told me about it.

I'm a Mac person-I have an iPhone, an iPad that I use as an e-reader also & a MacBook Air laptop that I love. Sold the desktop when I moved into the small ADU apartment my daughters family and I built on the large lot I've lived on for 45 years. Tore down the old house, built a new one.

We have Echo to remind and help keep up on staples we need (Amazon Prime), use Alexia and I use Siri on my iPhone-but for me she's a guy with an Australian accent. I call him Biff.

My son in law works from home online as a programmer for Square, the online credit card reader--yeah if it doesn't work, it's Brian's fault.

So our house is wired with uber high speed internet/wifi. I have done MMORPGames but no longer do-too much bandwidth that takes away from Brians ability to work.

We stream Hulu, Amazon Prime and Netflix all the time. As my eyesight is poor and reading sometimes an effort I listen to Audible books frequently. Or Pandora music.

And, when I was ill, I called Uber to take me to doctors appointments. At the new rate of $2.99 a ride for pool rides, It's cheaper than driving and paying to park.

I use Fred Meyers Clicklist to order groceries often-just pick them up when I want, or Uber will do it for me. Better than Safeway deliveries.

Were totally tech here-I can set my thermostat from my iPhone -down if I'm out for the day and warm the apartment up when I'm on my way home.

We use solar panels for electricity and donate the extra electric to the poor who have difficulty meeting winter electric bills-they no longer buy back excess electricity.

I play games, but also do brain training on my iPhone with apps like Fit Brain.

And if I can't sleep and my own meditation training docent help I open a meditation app to help guide me into sleep.

I also signed back on to Quora when I was down last summer-I joined when it was new, but took a several year break. Quora is a Q&A site and I enjoy writing and sharing my personal knowledge about lots of things..all the stuff we know because never been there before-and I learn a lot by reading others answers.

Its a great time passer for those who are sedentary.

A quote from a book I wrote about advertising and baby boomers in 2005:

“The computer/internet ethos for most Baby Boomers is that they pick and choose what technology they want to use, buy, or install. Some are all over Skype, video and music uploading and downloading, research, education, travel planning, shopping—while eschewing blogging, communities, and web page design. Or it’s the other way around. Or variations thereof. When it comes to new technology, most Baby Boomers learn only about what interests them, what they believe will be useful. They don’t feel the need to know everything there is to know about technology, computers, and the web.”

Chuck, that quote describes me, for sure. Latest and greatest tech? I feel I've "been there, done that, got the t-shirt." I did it enough. I'll try new things out, and keep them if they suit my needs, but I have no impulse any more to prove anything to anyone.

We don't have a TV. I have a desktop iMac with a nice big screen, a laser printer, an external drive set to Time Machine, and an external DVD drive. That's where I spend most of my time, banking, doing product research, and following news, videos, blogs, a text game, and a regular round of webcomics. I chat with friends via google hangouts, and have been using google docs and gmail heavily for many years. The search function is like a supplemental memory... socially, I don't know how I'd get along without it. The spreadsheets are how I track my life -- I have one where I've weighed myself every morning since May 2012.

I use social media very little. I don't want a Twitter account, and I imagine the Facebook account I made way back when the thing was first starting is long deleted.

I have an iPhone 6+, which I use for photos, FaceTime, scanning important documents I don't want to lose... and lately, for capturing my blood oxygen levels. I am still working out how to turn that data into something meaningful in a spreadsheet, so I (and my doctor) can see longer-term trends.

Much as I love the internet for all kinds of information, and e-mail for keeping in touch, I'm not really a screen person, so this is all I do. I may get another printer for art stuff. When my computer goes down, I have some panic and withdrawal, and think about that, and then enjoy the greater degree of simplicity. Did Facebook for a short time, and it wasn't for me.......it required a computer tech to disengage me, hmmmmm.