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The future is coming at you like a speeding train and it doesn’t care if you like it or not. Here’s how to avoid getting squashed.

In 1960, aka the “good old days,” there were 13 TV channels. There was an on/off button, volume control, and a channel dial that made loud clicking noises. Today it takes three remotes, two dongles (what’s a dongle?), a dozen wires, and a Doctorate degree to operate one. We now have access to thousands of channels and still, only about 13 are worthwhile.

In my 63-year lifetime, tie-dye T-shirts and bell-bottom pants gave way to Pong, which was replaced with game consoles, personal computers, and smartphones. My dog has a silicon chip and my refrigerator talks to me. Technology crept into our lives on little cat feet and infected virtually everything we hold dear. Were you paying attention? Most of us weren’t.

The future is charging at us like a speeding train and if you’re not prepared for the lifestyle changes it will bring, you’ll be as useful as the slide rule I used in elementary school.

Here’s a perfect example

I know a married couple in their 80s who are much like a lot of other married couples in their 80s. They have a smartphone that isn’t very smart. They use it to make calls, check email, and look at Facebook posts from their friends who are still alive. They have a computer too, but the internet is a mysterious place with pop-up windows, registration forms, and bandits lurking at every turn, so they don’t use it often.

Nobody goes to banks anymore, even the banks don’t like it. But my friends will go as long as they can drive, and the bank will allow it. When they can’t drive anymore they’ll be forced to use a computer or phone, or (gasp) admit they need help from someone else.

“I don’t text. I don’t need to. If they want to talk to me, they can pick up the damn phone!”

-Old people

I’m sorry to say that the grandkids won’t pick up the phone and call. Resistance to texting and technology is digging them deeper into the lonely pit of isolation. They’re surrounded by a vast society of individuals who would love to interact with them, but they can’t even talk to Alexa, Cortana, or Siri, all of whom are sitting beside them all day long waiting for a conversation.

Technology is the cure, not the disease.

What about you?

Let’s create a fictional you who is 50 years old, working a nice job in an office (remotely of course). You’re comfortable with computers and smartphones. You Zoom with your coworkers and friends and an Alexa appliance sits on your kitchen counter to help you with news, recipes, and music. Tech is your buddy.

Behind the scenes, today’s engineers are building the future. Not with concrete, glass, and steel, but with computers, artificial intelligence, and robots.

While you enjoy the good life, these engineers are making profound changes to healthcare, transportation, communication, housing, entertainment, finance, and more. These changes aren’t little tweaks, they’re radical new approaches that will shake you to the core.

Consider a night out for dinner and a show. You’ll talk (or think) to your phone-like device, and it will summon a self-driving car, tell it where to take you, lock the house and adjust the lights and thermostat while it plays your favorite music on the way. You’ll order dinner from the menu on the screen in the car. Food and drinks will be served as scheduled and you’ll simply walk out when you’re done. Your hearing aids will integrate with the show venue to optimize your listening experience and you’ll be able to change your viewing perspective with your augmented reality goggles. Everything will be paid automatically with cyber currency.

Utopia?

Nope, not even close. You’ll have to set all this up, update preferences, replace devices, and perform system upgrades that will fail occasionally, and you’ll have to diagnose and fix them. There will be multiple brands, styles, and models of devices and services to choose from, some that don’t play well with others. Don’t forget the ever-present threats from the bad guys and the resulting security layers you’ll have to fight your way through.

If you retire and bury your head in the sand at that lovely tropical beach resort, one day you’ll look up and the world will be a sci-fi movie. You’ll be lost, unable to get an appointment with your doctor, program the time on your microwave, or find a bank. Friends, and the rest of society, will be waiting eagerly on the other side of a monitor that you can’t turn on.

You could end up as isolated as my 80-year-old friends above.

How to future-proof your retirement years

You don’t need to learn to write code or build robots, you only need to be aware and engaged.

1. Take an interest in technology. Read articles like this one and learn about today’s toys and tomorrow’s business. Learn what will improve your life like self-driving cars, or what will change your life like remote medicine. Ask friends and family to show you what’s new and how it works. Put on a set of virtual reality goggles and play games with your grandkids.

2. Adopt mature technologies. You don’t need to be an early adopter of 3D printing and flying drones, but you should have a virtual assistant appliance (Alexa is the most popular) on your counter and you should talk to it because that’s a fundamental skill you’ll need in the near future.

3. Talk to tech-savvy people. Seek out young people and show an interest in their interests. Find out how they’re dating and paying (you’ll be surprised). Talk about how technology fits into their lives and what they think the future holds. Ask them to show you, not tell you.

4. Practice. Reading and talking are fine but doing is better. Download some of those apps your tech-savvy people showed you. Try them out and then delete them if you don’t like them. Order a meal delivery, borrow a car, send them some money. You don’t need to be an expert, just a participant.

5. Break things and fix them. Don’t be afraid, shy, or tentative. You learn by doing and part of that involves doing the wrong thing and sometimes breaking it. Fixing something broken will teach you ten times more than using it. Remember, it’s just a machine or program — it CAN be fixed.

6. Recognize change is fast and inevitable. The internet has only been around in a commercially useful form for about 25 years and look how it’s radically changed the world. Now imagine double or triple that speed of change and how insanely different this world will be in the next 15 years.

One final plea

Pandora won’t go back in her box no matter how badly you want to return to the good old days. It’s easier to ignore and deny than it is to confront a difficult truth that the future doesn’t care about you, but please don’t.

“I just want it to work!” doesn’t have to be the battle cry of your future. The solution is simple and fun:

Participate in your future!

The example of the 80-year-old couple above is true and they’re honestly struggling with technology because they’re afraid of it. Your job is to get past the fear and embrace it. You’ll be glad you did.