I’m an old guy, but I love technology. While many of my peers were having trouble trying to send an email, I was light years away.

One of the most useful things I learned in school was typing. By the time I finished 10th grade, I could type at 60 words per minute using any type of mechanical typewriter and produce a variety of documents. Learning to write has helped me in every job since then.

I first came across the technology when I joined the RAAF in 1965. Then we had teletype machines, or more appropriately called Telex machines. We would write a message that appeared as dots on a long, narrow paper tape, and when it was finished, we would feed the tape into the machine, hook it up to the phone line, and press a button. The Telex tape was chattering and sending the message faster than he could type. He produced an original and a carbon copy simultaneously.

If that wasn’t impressive enough, when I got to college in 1982 (as a middle-aged student), I discovered the first Apple II computer and a word processing program called Zardax. It didn’t take me long to use the university’s computers and printers to produce my assignments, all of which were printed in minutes looking sharp and professional.

My fellow students paid people to produce their assignments while I did mine in no time. The ability to cut and paste, embolden, italicize, and create the mandatory footnotes automatically won me over and changed my life forever.

Later I became a Professor of Higher and Technical Education in Queensland, Australia teaching within the business and computing discipline. I have taught typing using mechanical and electronic typewriters and word processors, desktop publishing, spreadsheets, databases, and programming, among other things. He loved technology, he loved students, and he enjoyed teaching it.

There were so many things one could accomplish using whizz-bang technology and thoughtful software programming. As a teacher, and later as a department head and training director, he made my life so much easier and more productive.

I have loved the technology ever since and have great respect for those behind its design. Although I’ve resisted buying a SMART phone for a few years, I’ve adapted well to my iPhone and all the great apps out there.

Now, I can book a doctor’s visit in an app and even have a CASIO Edifice watch check its time accuracy using an iPhone app every morning at 7 o’clock.

How good is that?