You Don’t Need to Understand Electrons to Turn On a Lightbulb

AgeTech

I was in a Grab car last week — that’s the Southeast Asian version of Uber — and the driver, a man who looked to be in his late sixties, was telling me how he started driving a few years ago. “I didn’t know how to use the app,” he said. “My daughter taught me. Now I can’t imagine life without it.”

He’s not a tech person. Never was. But he figured out the one button that matters — the one that connects him to a paying ride. He doesn’t need to know how the algorithm matches him to passengers, or where the servers live, or what programming language the app was written in. He just needs to know where to press.

And that’s the thing I want to say right at the start.

Technology, for most of us, works the same way. You don’t need to know how it works. You just need to know what it can do for you.

The Pace Is Real — But So Is the Simplification

I won’t pretend the pace of change isn’t dizzying. It is. Every few months there’s a new app, a new feature, a new way of doing something you’ve done the same way for thirty years. It can feel like the world is running ahead and you’re being left behind on purpose.

But here’s what I’ve noticed: while the technology itself gets more complex, the using of it keeps getting simpler.

The first time I used a banking app, I was nervous. What if I pressed the wrong thing? What if the money disappeared into a digital void? But the app was designed — deliberately, carefully — so that the most common actions are the easiest ones. Check balance: one tap. Transfer money: three taps. Pay a bill: scan a code. The complexity is hidden behind a very simple door.

That’s the pattern across most of the tools we’ll talk about in this series. The engineers do the hard work so we don’t have to.

A Quick Word on AI — No, Really Quick

You’ve heard the term. AI — artificial intelligence. It sounds like something from a science fiction film, and in some ways it is. But for most of us, AI is already showing up in quiet, unremarkable ways that make daily life a little easier.

When you type a question into Google and it gives you a summary at the top instead of just links — that’s AI. When your phone’s photo app recognizes your grandson’s face and groups all his pictures together — that’s AI. When WhatsApp suggests a reply while you’re typing — that’s AI too, trying to save you eight seconds.

None of these ask anything from you. You don’t configure them. You don’t read a manual. They just show up and make things marginally smoother.

We’ll explore AI more in a later piece. For now, the point is simply this: AI is not something you need to study. It’s something that’s already in your pocket, quietly working, asking nothing.

You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide — and That’s Okay

I’m not here to scare anyone. But I am here to be honest.

Technology is not an optional extra anymore. The bank branch near my house is half the size it used to be — fewer counters, fewer staff. The assumption now is that most of us bank on our phones. The bus company where I live stopped accepting cash. The restaurant down the road only takes orders through a QR code on the table.

You can resist it. But resisting it makes your world smaller. That’s the uncomfortable truth.

The better move — the one I’m trying to make myself — is to treat technology like any other tool that showed up in our lifetime. The microwave. The ATM. The remote control. Each one arrived, each one felt unfamiliar for about a week, and then each one became invisible. Just part of how we live.

The smartphone and its apps are no different. They’re just arriving faster and in larger numbers.

A Moment of Wonder

I need to pause here for a second.

I’m a baby boomer. If you had sat me down in 1965 — a boy in short trousers, listening to the radio — and told me that one day I’d be writing words on a screen that people across the world could read instantly, I would have stared at you with a certain odd curiosity. You might as well have told me I’d be walking on the moon.

And yet here we are. A person reads this on a phone, or a laptop, on Substack or on a blog. I share an opinion, a story, something that interests me — and it travels. No printing press. No publisher. No gatekeeper. Just a thought and a button.

Human evolution has been anything but ordinary. Nothing surprises anymore — but sometimes I think we should let it surprise us. Just for a moment. Just to remember that none of this was promised.

What This Series on Tech Will Do

I’m not writing this to turn anyone into a tech expert. I am the furthest thing from one.

I’m writing it because I’ve stumbled into using some of these tools and found that they make my life better — more connected, more convenient, more interesting. And I think sharing that, one article at a time, in plain language, might help someone who’s been feeling like the world is leaving them behind.

Next up: I’ll walk you through the tech I actually use, week in and week out. Nothing exotic. Just the tools that have quietly made life smoother.

Try one small thing this week. Download one app. Press one button. See what happens.

Then come back and tell me how it went. I genuinely want to know.