By the way, I’m 56. I connect with my family on the East Coast through Google Hangouts. Phenomenal!

Really enjoy your blog, Rachelle.

When my first great-grandchild was born earlier this year, although we live in New Mexico and they are more than 1500 miles away in Seattle, it was almost like being there when my daughter sent a photo taken with her smart phone to my husband’s smart phone. When I saw the picture of my beautiful granddaughter holding her minutes-old baby boy, I kissed the picture… which made Stan’ smart phone screen go all wonky, but I could not help myself!

I have fond memories of 4 of my own great-grandparents, all of whom were born in the 1800s. This is a great time to be alive, and to be a very youthful 60-something great grandparent!

(Point #2 reminds me of a cartoon: A scruffy looking guy (aka a “bum) sits dejected on a park bench. The caption reads “He used to be in IT, but took a 6 week vacation and fell so far behind that he couldn’t catch up.”)

I agree completely, that knowing the technology is vital in creating a setting. It’s a part of research, and analogous to accuracy in a historical novel.

And yes, all college students text. Mine did…in class.

That brings to mind the changed mores that have come with the technology. The kids really did not see it as a problem, that they were sending texts while I was lecturing.

A more serious issue was plagiarism – the kids could download term papers on almost any subject, and pass the work as their own. Some instructors bought software that would screen what the kids wrote, and compare it to what was available.

The problem is very widespread, and again, students generally don’t feel there’s a moral conflict. They are there to get good grades and a degree, period, and they resent anything that interferes with the ‘streamlining’ of that process.

I had my own solution. I made them write papers longhand. Not very popular, but fairly effective.

Andrew, I agree specific references can date a story. (The very first draft of my first ms had a doctor using a pager because my own doctor still did, even though cell phones were popular. He didn’t trust the reliability of always getting a signal. But rewrites had my character using a cell.)

Mostly, I was thinking of a situation where an author’s reluctance to using technology could prevent a character from being believable or relevant. What college student doesn’t text? Maybe my character wouldn’t, but she’d probably be razzed by a friend for not having it on her cell phone plan. My younger than 30-year-old characters will be savvy about technology unless there’s a specific reason for them not to be. So, I’d better learn what I need to write believable stories.

Current technical references can be important, but they can also seriously date a book. Twenty years ago, you could add a reference to a floppy disk. Now it’ll make a reader cringe.

After that it was the zip disk. Does ANYONE remember those?

It’s better, I think, to keep the technology in the background unless it’s needed to move the plot or character development ahead. Specificity does not necessarily add verisimilitude, and a lot of the actions – Facebooking, Tweeting, etc., are already implied in daily life.

“I taught civil engineering for a bit more than ten years, a period which
spanned a lot of the transitions you’ve mentioned. In that time, the
students went from having an intuitive sense of how things worked – and
sometimes didn’t – to an idealized picture of how things are supposed to
be in a flawless, digital world.” – Andrew Budek-Schmeisser

You are brilliant! Your above statement really ‘hit the nail on the head’. I shielded my now 21 year old from all technology until he hit 16. He is now entering his third year as a mechanical engineering student. Once he got that first cell phone and computer – all work that went into process planning (for anything) went out the window, even for little things. He too just trusts the software to come up with the best approach. Ugh.