Technologically Speaking

I appreciate people who use technology. I feel like we have reached a point in which members of my generation are, for the most part, pretty technically savvy. People in the previous generations have a mix of those who are and those who aren't. Take my parents for example. They have a Mac, an iPad, an iPod touch and a Kindle. They are pretty proficient with them and don't hesitate to get help when they need it. They don't have smartphones because I think they feel like that might be too much, and I can appreciate that. I would estimate that about 50% of the people I am connected to on Facebook have parents or at least one parent who is also on Facebook. When I was out on maternity leave I was able to keep up with my emails via my Blackberry and remote log-in. When I got back to the office, after 12 weeks, I found I had missed a grand total of 2 calls on my landline phone and there was one voicemail. Point being, people are trending towards email these days. Declan's pediatrician is a big fan of email. It's great. He has emailed me his vaccination records, a large PDF poster of infant and child CPR/choking techniques and most recently the results of Declan's anemia and lead test yesterday (normal on both accounts).

I get annoyed, however, when people act like they are all about technology and they really aren't. At the recommendation of my coworker I signed up for a membership with a certain federal-based credit union. It isn't one of the bigger ones that advertises on television, but it is large enough that they offer mortgages and car loans. I was very excited at the prospect of low rates. What I didn't anticipate was all the annoyance. I signed up online and indicated I would prefer to do all my transactions online. They sent me a form to fill out and return in the mail, which I did, and then I got nothing. I was supposed to get an initial account statement with my member number and a PIN mailed to me separately. After prodding them twice via email they sent me the statement. I have attempted to call their toll-free number like 2 dozen times this week to request my PIN. They only take PIN requests via phone. I keep getting a busy signal. A freaking busy signal. In what day and age does that happen when you are calling a business? I have decided that I am not comfortable doing any business, online or otherwise, with a bank that simply can't be reached by phone so I have drafted a letter, a snail mail letter, requesting they close my account and refund my initial deposit less than two months after initiating it. Ridiculous. I'm not going to name them here but if you are ever thinking about joining this bank please read these Yelp reviews and reconsider.

I can't even begin to imagine what it will be like when Declan is my age. I mean when I was in undergrad the prospect of conducting classes online was completely foreign, although email was a great way to get in touch with the professors. 10 years later when I went back for undergrad we were using Blackboard for everything from exams to online discussions and it saved me a number of commutes to campus. I just hope we aren't isolating ourselves from human contact too much.