Original Image by Crystl
I got an interesting email from a member of the Spark community the other day, and it inspired this question:
Is there a “technology gap” in your home?
You know, where one half of a couple is forever blogging, podcasting and geeking out with the latest gadget, and the other half has a completely different set of interests? Perhaps you’re on Facebook and your partner isn’t, and you end up fielding Facebook invites for your honey. Or maybe you wonder what the heck that person you love does all that time she or he is online, and how someone can consider people they’ve never met “friends”.
For our upcoming Valentine show, we’re wondering how you negotiate that technology gap. What tradeoffs do you make? Is it a source of tension, or are you happy to have some separate interests?
Thanks for the help!
Male 57 – our music business is niche driven – I am 24/7 innovating online
Female 56 – harpist/ harp instrument seller – networker extraordinaire in person
Between the two of us we craft a 21st century self employed niche living
Me left brain Tarzan – you right brain Jane sums it up well.
What Seth Godin, Jeff Jarvis and others are telling us is that Tarzan brains yelling from treetops do not cut it anymore and in fact getting Jane like qualities online are so important to grok what is happening to all of the world as we know it and not just the digital realm too.
Mass media is dying – what is replacing it? – not Tarzan.
For me the resolution is spiritual. As a couple we allow each other to mature into "who we really are" by each exploring our inner selves with total freedom and acceptance from the other. The outer changes we see in the world are very much paralleled in our inner selves if we simply observe inwards. My Tarzan is becoming more right brain intuitive and her Jane is learning to swing from vine to vine in a linear focused fashion.
Our valentine is as a team breaking of the barriers that define our perception, our role, our worldview. The new century requires new thoughts, words and deeds. It all starts at "home" deep in the recesses of a mind with a worldview/belief system that no longer serves.
Our valentine is sharing this journey together – everyday is Valentine's Day for us now as our mutual re-cognition of who we are cross the divide between virtual Tarzan and reality Jane.
There has always been a huge technology gap in in my house. I'm always blogging or tweaking my various websites, while my wife (who works in human resources) has little interest in anything that falls outside of the Yahoo home page.
But as tech services like Facebook, Twitter, etc enter the mainstream, the tech gap between us slowly bridges a little bit at a time. Recently my wife has surprised me on a few occasions, most notably a few days ago when we went downtown. My wife ventured off shopping alone, as she often does, and we had planned to meet in the evening to take the subway back home together. She was late arriving at the station, and I remember thinking to myself that her delay was most likely caused by a new pair of shoes or something like that.
Imagine my surprise when she finally arrives at the station, reaches into her purse and pulls out an Apple Airport Express Wifi Base Station. "Sorry I'm late," she said. "But I really need one of these."
That was a damn sexy moment, that was…
Keep up the good work on the show!
Rick
Tokyo, Japan
Looking forward to the Valentine show! There's a huge technology gap in our home. I (33-year old female) can't live without my computer. I eat breakfast at the computer, while carrying out my daily routine of checking my favourite news and entertainment pages. I update my ipod daily with the podcasts I can't live without (including Spark and Search Engine). I use facebook as a primary means of communication with many of my friends; I watch my favourite shows online more than on I do on tv; I do a google search to come up with the answer to any question I can't answer; I use Blackboard, an e-education platform to supplement my face-to-face teaching; and I am one of many who uses her laptop as a recipe book! My partner (26-year old male) uses my computer about once a week to check his email account, which he only uses for work-related communication. His music collection exists on CD only, which he listens to either on his portable CD player (a la discman) or his CD/radio combo (a mini-boom box). The technology gap in our house has yet to cause any tension in our relationship; if anything it provides a source of amusement from time to time. We accept it as one of the differences that makes us work!
These are great stories!
@Stephen, This is something we keep coming across on the show: the idea that what the online world needs are bridge figures, communicators, fresh thinkers who are actually able to inspire other people.
I used to have this problem when I got my MacbookPro. There was a while where there was alot of contempt for my wonderful new tech device but it was easily solved by buying her one of her own!
I'm definitely the web geek in my relationship, and while my girlfriend is no Luddite, the technology gap is alive and present.
I work as a nonprofit communications consultant, so I try to apply a bit of my professional life to my personal life, and make myself useful to those around me. Fortunately my girlfriend is involved with a few nonprofits, so I'm able to help her out with things like online marketing, Google Grants, and blogging.
While this doesn't diminish how much of a nerd she thinks I am, it certainly helps to bridge the gap by allowing us to be geeky together. And since she ends up saving time on the work she needs to do, we end up with more time to spend together — away from the LCD screen.
This is one of the issues I'm going to talk about with sex and relationship blogger Twanna Hines. She talks about the value of actually sharing some tech interests together. I imagine that's especially true if you can connect it to a bigger value that's important to both people.
I can't believe I didn't see this before until you mentioned it on the latest podcast, this is totally me! I'm the one half of the relationship who is into all things techy, I research new gadgets daily, I twitter daily, I am even thinking of starting my own youtube channel doing reviews of gadgets that I have bought, I have already started.
My girlfriend on the other hand is not as enthusiastic about new media or technology as I am, she joined twitter after I kept telling her what those I was following were saying. And she will occasionally update her twitter just so when I check which is multiply times a day I see her note.
I recently bought an iPhone 3g and I'm finding that it allows me to update and post on blogs or send e-mails anywhere I am which helps a lot, so when I come home from work or school I can spend more time with her than go straight for the computer. I still find however that balancing it all is an ongoing battle.
Gadgets are a passion. And like any passion, they can get out of control.
I was in the tech world all through the 90's, but it wasn't until I worked for a hardware company in SF that I got the gadget bug. My first love was a ReplayTV PVR, because it married a gorgeous piece of hardware with intuitive, slick software that transformed my entertainment life. And that was 10 years ago.
My wife runs a web/ecommerce development company, so she's no tech slouch. She brings home her macbook air and works through the one or two hours that we have after kiddy bedtime. And she was addicted to Crackberry long before it became mainstream.
And yet, I am the tech geek. I'm the one eagerly searching out the latest and greatest, and will to bleed for the leading edge.
Is it a source of tension? You betcha. My iPhone doesn't make me more productive, giving me more time with my wife/family. It sucks time, and like every passion, needs to be reined in before it overtakes what really matters.
now excuse me, i have to tweet
That last line was hilarious!
I'm assuming that this is true not only for tech, but for any interest only one partner is passionate about.
But what about the computer? From the early 70s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHo4yGjYhJo
I am pretty glad that my fiance is not as plugged in to digital culture as I am. It means that the time I spend with him in the real world is much more sane and grounded in real things like good food, great wine, and conversation. Aaaaaand I'm pretty glad he doesn't track all my Facebook wall posts or read my ranting bride blogs, because he might never speak to me again if he did. My partner's reluctance to buy in to the hype of tech culture has created a Wall-E/Eve dichotomy in our relationship: he is hard-working, does his job competently but slowly, and takes pleasure in small wonders, and I am always doing things as quickly and efficiently and with as many Mac product placements as possible. Somehow, it works.