The iPad generation

When new technology comes along, it's the younger generation that adopt it fastest, right? 

So I knew that when I took my iPad on holiday to our B&B in Lake Como, which would be full of old people, I would be a trendsetter. I imagined the other guests, with their steam-driven laptop computers, gathering around me with astonishment and awe, asking how it worked and being amazed as I stretched maps, took photographs and edited and emailed them on the fly and used the iPad as a satnav, voice-driven word processor and “checked in” with Facebook.

Nor was I disappointed, at least at first.  On the first morning as we arrived at breakfast there was a couple in their 50s or 60s using a Dell.  A Dell.  A laptop was bad enough, but a Dell.  Oh dear, oh dear.

Unostentatiously, I opened the cover of my iPad. In theory I was looking up the weather.  In practice I was putting them in their place. How very twentieth century you are, was the message I portrayed.

Without preening myself too much or being overtly smug, I folded back the iPad cover to make a stand so that I could type. Or press buttons. Or whatever.

Then, to my amazement, the couple at the next table opened their iPads.  One each.  Of the next four days, everyone who produced a computer produced an iPad. The youngest was in their late twenties. Most couple were ten years old than we are.  They probably still are, come to think of it. We are the iPad generation.

What will our children, or our children's children do? When your parents are leading the charge on new technology, what can cool kids do? Retro, I expect.

My prediction for the next big thing wih the younger generation is the abacus.

You read it here first ...