When the internet reordered our lives in the 1990s, my mother was first befuddled, then outraged.

Try as we might, my brothers and I never got her comfortable navigating a laptop or Googling for information. Then, when everything from banks to pharmacies started using automated systems to direct customers to online services, she raged against the machines.

Why can’t they just answer the damn phone, she’d fume.

She died at the age of 92, still subscribing to the dead-tree versions of newspapers and keeping an old phone book around to look up the numbers for local businesses despite the fact that they rarely answered her calls.

I promised myself I wouldn’t be so stubborn.

So far, so good. I mostly delight in scientific and technological advancement. I love my induction range, I never wa

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