Mike D. @ ITP

About two weeks before this semster started, I started having these incredibly strong pains in my stomach, and by mid-January I was having trouble getting out of bed. That’s not the point of this story — I was put on Prevacid for (assumedly) the start of a small ulcer, and I’m mostly-fine now.

The point, however, is how much I forget how the generation gaps impact our views on technology. I’d been given a few medicines when taken to the emergency room, and these are the “take at the same time every day or they won’t work and you’ll die or at least a big fratboy will come hit you with a brick” type of medicines, so I was afraid to bring them with me to my appointment (as in my life, if you move it physically from my routine in the morning, it’s as good as gone). Instead, I took pictures with my lil’ aging digital camera and hopped the train to my doc’s office.

The appointment was all nice and basic, and when the doctor was asking his follow-up questions about what I’d been given, I broke out my camera to consult the dosage and spelling — and this blew his mind. He stood there exclaiming how cool this was, and how he’d never seen anything like this, on and on, for a good five minutes. In my mind, a digital camera is just a device for documenting items in my everyday life, and I’ll reach for that before a pad and pen. However, to my doctor (who’s not an old dude by any strech) was just blown away by the concept.

I hope if I learned anything it’s that just a few years’ difference in age can mean all the difference in the world in terms of assumed perception. Our own Clay Shirky actually just said something similar (and much more eloquently) in this NY Magazine article that I’d just read for Urban Computing.

Also, I’ve learned that apparently a lifestyle centered around stress, sleep deprivation, coffee, beer, scotch, spicy snacks and fried food is bad for your stomach lining. Who knew?