That’s right, I’m a people watcher.
My wife and I both are…we enjoy going to places and just watching the types of people that are all around us and start thinking about the lives that they live completely disconnected from our own. Last week, we were both in Vegas for a conference I presented at and we could’ve people watched all day long. On the plane trip home I noticed a man and his wife sitting across from us minding their own business but check this picture out (I couldn’t resist).
Now two things are going on in this picture.
1) The Obvious - I dunno how this guy sleeps that way. I’d have a neck problem for a month!
2) The Subtle - His wife, sitting next to him. If you look closely you’ll see her writing away in her address book. This is what got my attention more than the old man. What she was doing was transcribing her addresses from her OLD address book into a NEW address book. I could see that she had contact after contact of people that she was patiently writing from one book to another. So me and all my geekery started translating this into a technology discussion.
Why would she do this? Why not put it in the computer and store it indefinitely, update it at her leisure, and not have to spend hours inputting this data ever again? WHY?!?
Since I had time to spare on the plane ride I let me mind wander. I find things like this interesting because I’m always trying to understand the gap differences between generations and why Gen X/Y’s do what we do and why Boomers/Pre-Boomers do what they do. It all relates back to me to the financial industry and why people like in the photo go into branches for every single transaction they ever do and then there are people like myself that hasn’t been IN a branch for years.
I came to the conclusion that is was a comfortability issue. She did it that way because I’m sure she’s done this same task 10-20 times before and its what she knows. Her technology of having a smaller address book is far more advanced than putting it down on an large address book binder that she couldn’t tote around with her. She keeps her little address book in her purse and knows she can go to it at any point. It has, in a way, become a security blanket for her…she relies on it to be there in her purse when she calls on it. The thought of having a cell phone with all this data probably hasn’t even crossed her mind and if it had, she probably dismissed it just as fast because it sounded too complex for her to accomplish. That statement in itself is another interesting discussion. How ’she’ judges that as complex.
Aren’t people interesting?
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