I’m in my 70s and have no problem with technology when it comes to modern cars except it can break and I don’t need it. Give me a manual transmission, a regular metal key, crank windows, manual door locks, no cameras or screens, no electric seats, cable parking brake, etc… I want a simple, reliable car that is cheap to run and gets me where I want to go. My 6 year old car fits the bill but similar new cars are few and far between.
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And who’s fault is that? It’s their decision not to. But unfortunately, they have to live with the consequences. I have an uncle that died of lung cancer. Never smoked. But about 10 years before he was diagnosed with lung cancer there were a lot of homes in the area that had tested for Radon. He REFUSED to have his house tested. After he died - before the family sold the house, they got it tested for Radon. It was 100 times over the acceptable/safe limit.
We still have homes in NH with no electricity. There are some homes not far from me that still have working out houses.
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Some people amaze me with their resistance to virtually anything new–including medical tests. My department’s secretary refused to get Mammograms and to get diagnostic Colonoscopies, even though her mother died from breast cancer, and her father died from colon cancer. Every time that the other women would urge her to get these tests, she said the same thing: “I don’t want to know!”.
Huh? 
Sadly, she died a few years ago, in great pain from the cancer that had riddled her body.
My father-in-law best friend died of lung cancer. Heavy smoker his whole life. On his death bed he refused to acknowledge that smoking might have caused it.
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I think there is a large fraction of folks, young and old, whose minds just aren’t ‘wired’ for complex tech. Folks I know that want to learn, listen to my (repeated) explanations, understand them, repeat them, demonstrate them, but don’t retain them. So I don’t think it’s their ‘fault’, it’s just the way they are.
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Similarly, some people can’t readily adapt to any type of change.
Using tech and understanding the inner workings of tech are two completely different things. You don’t need to understand how an x-ray works to get one and benefit from it.
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I know when I had an MRI that I didn’t need to understand how it worked, but I wanted to understand the technology behind the machine. I read up on the technology.
I had a friend that owned a Prius. She had driven 20 miles into town and when she got ready to go home an hour later, the Prius wouldn’t start, so she called me to come jump the battery. Now I knew there was a 12 volt battery that supplied the initial power and the high voltage batteries that power the motor that propels the car, but I had no idea how the small 12 volt battery was recharged. I measured the voltage of the small battery and it was less than 8 volts. My friend wanted to go buy a new battery, but I was concerned that the battery wasn’t being charged. I told her to have the Prius towed to the Toyota dealer and had her take my van to get home. I then went online to read about the inversion/conversion system that keeps the small battery charged. The problem with my friend’s Prius was the small battery, but I didn’t want to install a new battery when that wasn’t the problem.
One place where I believe that our educational system fails students is not helpiing them develop a sense of curiosity.
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My comment was about using tech, like the multiple layers of steps on some care touchscreen controls.
To get an x-ray and benefit from it is not the same thing as USING the technology. You can be reasonably sure that the tech that OPERATED the x-ray machine has an understanding of how x-ray works, although not of how the electronics work.
Same for an MRI. The tech doesn’t need to know the details of how the machine operates but you can be sure that they understand the physics of the machine and how it collects the imaging data. You, the patient laying on the table, don’t need to know anything but to keep still. That makes you the subject of the study, not the user of the technology.
I dunno, before I retired I always had people around that could explain anything new or come push the right button if I got stuck. Now on my own I can spend time trying to figure out how to get rid of a split screen. Just comes a point when you would rather just leave things alone if they work.
Yeah I have a fancy phone and some of the features are nice like traffic, weather, and checking the furnace when not at home but gee whiz if I change routers then I have to re-do the network info on everything according to my hvac guy. Who needs the Hassle? Then the cameras that upload to a third party that you have no idea who has access to your views of your house outside and inside. Buy a cup of coffee with your phone? Close your garage door 50 miles away? Push a button on your phone to turn your lights on before you get home? Just sayin who needs this stuff unless you just like gadgets. The one time I needed to make sure the roofers closed my garage door, the police were more than happy to drive by and check. Nothing against it all but most people don’t understand the security risks of some of this stuff and who has access.
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One statement that always bothered is “You don’t need to know how sometimes works”. I want to know how something works.
I attended a conference over 30 years ago and one session concerned the use of computers in th public schools. The presenter displayed a graph that showed how the use of the computers for programming had shrunk from over 50% to less than 10%. The main use had become word processing and spread sheets. The presenter made the statement that programming wasn’t important. I objected because I believe that learning to program helps one learn to think logically. The presenter then responded with the following: “I supervise student teachers at my university. I drive 20,000 miles a year in my job. I am a good driver, but I don’t know what goes on under the hood of my car and I don’t care to know”. I responded “I hope the rest of the citizens in your state don’t have your driving sense of curiosity”.
Another colleague and I had a small grant to teach at risk students algebra through computer programming. Our experiment was successful. The computer programming helped the students with mathematical logic.
As I said earlier, I hate the statement that “You don’t need to know ‘X’.” The statement should be “You should want to know ‘X’.”
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Same logic applied to memorizing Shakespeare sonnets?
People are a product of their times and some are very happy to live in the simpler times. I volunteer at our local senior center and some of our patrons are having a hard time remembering to dial the Area Code before they dial their local phone number… They might live two blocks away and they resent having to dial the area code to call home…
I remember our first phone was a party line in the early '50s and our phone “code” was two longs and a short… We had a telephone operator like “Sarah” on the old TV Show “Andy of Mayberry.”
After more phones were installed in our area we got a “telephone switch” our first real phone number was 8-0495… As more and more phones were installed, the phone company had to add two more numbers…
But they thought people were too dumb to remember seven numbers so they created a “reference code” and our new number was “Hemlock 8-0495” where the first two letters “H and E” stood for the numbers “4 and 3”… Some of the other reference codes were Ivanhoe (4 and 8), Jupiter (5 and 8), just to name a few…
A few years back, I had an 80-year old female farmer in the computer class I was teaching and her complaint was her great-grandson was being such a jerk about teaching her how to use a computer and was so insulting because she had never used one but wanted to learn. She said the little (disparaging tern…) will not even help her milk the cows because he might step in something… He can’t milk a cow, slop a pig, or even walk in the barnyard, but he can text up a storm…
I am more amenable to technology as I was computer programmer and was programming main frame computers in the early '70s, and I was happy that technology was an aid to people, but now, that is no longer so… Perplex have become a slave to that technology… and we have whole new class of people – Phone Zombies…
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Back in the 50s ours was Edison. Local telephone switching equipment had to be upgraded to provide touch tone instead the old dial system. The big cities had it but not us. When the twins were in the World Series, you could call in to get tickets but competed with everyone else that could rapid dial. Even if we tried the redial feature one one of our phones we were never fast enough to get tickets before they were sold out.
Our new boss was amazed that we didn’t have touch tone phones at work but bell refused to upgrade the switch. I promised him we would get it but had to buy our own switch to do it. He enjoyed the last few months of his four year stint with touch tone.
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Mrs JT had a very hard time learning a new GUI. She always asks me to print anything she needs printed. It doesn’t matter how easy or difficult the print job is. She does many other things very well, including shopping online (of course).
This reminds me of the time I showed my dad how to use the internet. Soon after the internet became widespread. He seemed to grasp the concept of computers connected to each other and sharing their info ok, so I’m thinking maybe this will work. During the session he wanted a page printed, so I showed him how. Later he asked how the mouse printed the page, b/c the mouse is so small, and why he didn’t see the page come out of the mouse???
While I agree that some people are wired for tech and some are not, I disagree that the “nots” cannot learn. While it may be more difficult to learn for them, it requires a higher level of effort that we, as naturally lazy beings, are often loathe to put in. At the end of the day it is a choice. I am not good at playing guitar and it is hard for me to learn how to play it. I could learn to play guitar with a very high level of effort. It is my choice not to. So I will never be a star in a rock band. I can live with that outcome. Does that make sense?
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Same boat here!
Are you a drummer? Your handle begs the question 
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Shade tree mechanic, hence the bloody knuckles. Now that I have discovered Mechanix gloves, the incidence of said bloody knuckles is nearly zero. I now only smash my hands when I foolishly take the gloves off for just a minute and WHAM, that’s when the car bites me. 