So many thoughts on this topic. Just a few here. My wife is totally anti-technology which makes it hard to be a small business owner. Despite my efforts to streamline her "processes" through automated book-keeping, invoicing, inventory, tax info, website creation, etc. she blocks most of my attempts and reverts to individual, hand-typed Word invoices...especially for her local customers. She begrudgingly will use PayPal for other customers outside our area.
The brain is an amazing piece of human engineering. I can remember just about every aspect of my dreams. My wife either doesn't dream or doesn't remember any of hers. Over the past 30+ years of marriage, I've routinely had to help her find her purse, phone, keys, tablet, etc. as she tends to just put stuff down wherever she is at the time. I've worked to try to keep her organized by having one-spot for all this stuff and getting her into a routine. But in the past few years, have given up on that and now I just quietly collect her things where I find them and put them where I know she'll see them vs. trying to change behavior. At one point, we lost her car keys, house keys and other keys all on one ring. We didn't find them until about 5 years later when we opened a photo album and there they were. She had been walking in the door and on the phone with her mom who had asked about a specific photo. She grabbed the album, retrieved the photo but left the keys. I once found the landline phone in the freezer. It does amaze me that she has echo-location issues with inanimate objects but a steel-trap when it comes to something I said (but shouldn't have said) 25 years ago. And she's also a human computer when it comes to numbers...especially expenses and bills. She can spot a Wendy's expense buried 15 entries down on a transaction record and holds me accountable. Actions create consequences!
I've gravitated to technology over the years as it seems to generally simplify life. I'd have the whole house wired to Alexa and automated if I could. Some of my fondest memories are my wife's arguments with Alexa about turning lights on or off. My brain can instantly recall all the lyrics to an 80s song I haven't heard in 10 years but can't remember what I just read on a page in a book. I was lousy at test-taking because of that. I did very well on written answer questions but horrible on multiple choice. I also have trouble recalling our old home telephone number from my childhood days, but can drive straight to the location where I caught my first brook trout here in Idaho.... without a map OR GPS. And speaking of maps...how'd we ever survive with those? Closest you could get to an address was two cross-streets. GPS is amazing!...and getting better. I'm still perplexed that as good as it is, the NFL is still relying on two sticks and 10 yards of chain held by humans to determine if a ball has gone past the first-down line.
It's also astounding to me thinking about the Apollo program and putting people on the moon with the computer power (or lack of) of the late 60s. Looking at old photos of engineers using slide rules to verify computer calculations just makes me shake my head. The human brains were definitely being put to the test back then vs. now with the increasing power of AI. I've also dabbled in ChatGPT and found it pretty incredible with providing at least a draft of what I'm after. It's a tool. Back to my wife's business website... first time I'd seen the option to use AI in the product description block. By typing in a few simple key words, the program spits out a pretty darn good description of the product with all the appropriate adjectives needed to increase customer interest. Of course, my wife will retain all "final edit" rights since she "doesn't trust a machine to get it right." And so it goes...
So many thoughts on this topic. Just a few here. My wife is totally anti-technology which makes it hard to be a small business owner. Despite my efforts to streamline her "processes" through automated book-keeping, invoicing, inventory, tax info, website creation, etc. she blocks most of my attempts and reverts to individual, hand-typed Word invoices...especially for her local customers. She begrudgingly will use PayPal for other customers outside our area.
The brain is an amazing piece of human engineering. I can remember just about every aspect of my dreams. My wife either doesn't dream or doesn't remember any of hers. Over the past 30+ years of marriage, I've routinely had to help her find her purse, phone, keys, tablet, etc. as she tends to just put stuff down wherever she is at the time. I've worked to try to keep her organized by having one-spot for all this stuff and getting her into a routine. But in the past few years, have given up on that and now I just quietly collect her things where I find them and put them where I know she'll see them vs. trying to change behavior. At one point, we lost her car keys, house keys and other keys all on one ring. We didn't find them until about 5 years later when we opened a photo album and there they were. She had been walking in the door and on the phone with her mom who had asked about a specific photo. She grabbed the album, retrieved the photo but left the keys. I once found the landline phone in the freezer. It does amaze me that she has echo-location issues with inanimate objects but a steel-trap when it comes to something I said (but shouldn't have said) 25 years ago. And she's also a human computer when it comes to numbers...especially expenses and bills. She can spot a Wendy's expense buried 15 entries down on a transaction record and holds me accountable. Actions create consequences!
I've gravitated to technology over the years as it seems to generally simplify life. I'd have the whole house wired to Alexa and automated if I could. Some of my fondest memories are my wife's arguments with Alexa about turning lights on or off. My brain can instantly recall all the lyrics to an 80s song I haven't heard in 10 years but can't remember what I just read on a page in a book. I was lousy at test-taking because of that. I did very well on written answer questions but horrible on multiple choice. I also have trouble recalling our old home telephone number from my childhood days, but can drive straight to the location where I caught my first brook trout here in Idaho.... without a map OR GPS. And speaking of maps...how'd we ever survive with those? Closest you could get to an address was two cross-streets. GPS is amazing!...and getting better. I'm still perplexed that as good as it is, the NFL is still relying on two sticks and 10 yards of chain held by humans to determine if a ball has gone past the first-down line.
It's also astounding to me thinking about the Apollo program and putting people on the moon with the computer power (or lack of) of the late 60s. Looking at old photos of engineers using slide rules to verify computer calculations just makes me shake my head. The human brains were definitely being put to the test back then vs. now with the increasing power of AI. I've also dabbled in ChatGPT and found it pretty incredible with providing at least a draft of what I'm after. It's a tool. Back to my wife's business website... first time I'd seen the option to use AI in the product description block. By typing in a few simple key words, the program spits out a pretty darn good description of the product with all the appropriate adjectives needed to increase customer interest. Of course, my wife will retain all "final edit" rights since she "doesn't trust a machine to get it right." And so it goes...