Death to Email

Transcription of Audio

Todd: Hey Jen, we're talking about technology. I'm curious. How many times do you check your email every day?

Jen: Nowadays I check it every day because I have so many emails coming from my company so I have to be updated, but in the past I would not check it for like, I would just check it two or three times a week. How about you?

Todd: Yes, actually I brought that up because I think this is an interesting generational shift. I don't check Facebook and all that stuff that much, but my generation, we check email multiple times a day for work, like you just said. But the younger generation from what I understand, you guys don't even use email.

Jen: Yeah, like if you asked me the same question two months ago I would say I hardly check my mails because everything, like all the conversation I have, it's all on Facebook or some other social media, not emails. I think that's very old school.

Todd: Yeah. So you do like text messaging, LINE, WhatsApp?

Jen: Yeah, all of that.

Todd: All of that. How many accounts do you have actively, that you actively use?

Jen: Wait. Maybe ... I actively use five of them, but I have eight of them, yeah.

Todd: Wow, you can manage that. The reason I don't do it, I imagine that you just must get a message like every 20 seconds.

Jen: Not every 20 seconds, unless you're dating, but yeah, you get a lot of messages.

Todd: Really? And that doesn't drive you crazy? That doesn't like bother you?

Jen: I think in the beginning it was like too much, but now we have just gotten like used to it. It's just very normal for us. It's like you checking your mail three times a day, which is crazy for me.

Todd: Yeah, but still. Here the thing is I don't like the phone. I think we've talked about this before. My generation was the fingers generation, so we used our fingers to type. And the younger generation, you use your thumb. And to me it's really slow and just painstaking to do, to communicate with your thumb on the phone.

Jen: Really? Because for me I think it's faster than typing.

Todd: I know. Actually I see you guys and it's amazing. I see my students how fast they can use their phone, and it's phenomenal to me. It's like blurry, it's so fast.

Jen: I think if you start using your phone more and not your PC then you would be fast at it too, because even if I were to check my mails I don't do it from my PC, I actually do reply to all my mails from my phone itself.

Todd: Wow. Actually no, I think it's not true because I've tried. I think it's because I'm older. My phone gets stiff. I mean my phone ... My thumb gets stiff like arthritis or something, like it literally stops moving. That's why I'm amazed.

Jen: Maybe it's just in your head.

Todd: I physically can't do it. No, no, I really like, and when I type I could type really fast, touch type, but I cannot move my thumb that fast. The more, the longer I try I get thumb fatigue, like my thumb just stops, the joint won't work anymore.

Jen: For me it's very difficult for me to type really fast. I would rather use my thumb and text.

Todd: No, that's cool. Now these days I don't know if you've realized but you can do voice typing. Have you tried that? Google Docs for example, you don't even have to type anymore. You can just talk in a microphone and with no special software and Google Docs will type what you say.

Jen: But then again you have to be very clear because it always makes a lot of mistakes.

Todd: Yeah, but you know what's amazing about it, is I had, I was doing it with my students and then I was going to have my student do it and the voice recorder wouldn't take their voice, it would only take my voice.

Jen: I think it's because the ...

Todd: The user account name?

Jen: Yeah, the user account name can only recognize your voice because that's been saved first.

Todd: Right, so it saves the first voice, then another one won't work.

Jen: Yeah, I guess.

Todd: So that brings up the question, technology gets better and better and better. Do you think typing will be obsolete, will be gone in five, 10 years?

Jen: I cannot really say but maybe no, not in 10 years. Maybe 20 to 30 years, yes, but not in 10 years, because I think still people are more comfortable writing their books and stuff like reports, just typing. Everybody doesn't like to talk a lot.

Todd: True. Yeah, I think there's a different mental process when you type and it's just when you just speak it goes away.

Jen: Yeah.