We sat down for what was scheduled to be an hour-long overview of how to use his iPad. He received it as a gift from his children for Christmas, but as his son and wife would explain to me, he had little want to turn it on. There in his hands was indeed one of the technological tools of our day that has been making waves, but for this man – this man who had worked many years and was intent on enjoying his retirement – this device got in the way. It wasn’t something that he could see that would push him forward. I was tasked with helping to illuminate this device, and also to learn what it means to move forward.

We sat down in an empty computer room. His wife was there as well as this seasoned couple looked the part of a great family story in the making. They enjoyed one another, played off one another, and in due course, we got to talking about his iPad. But, only after we got into what really motivated this man to “work” when he was well into enjoying his retirement.

He explained to me about how he got to the point of looking for, and later documenting into two books, his family tree. For many people, we think of the family tree when it comes time for weddings, funerals, and family reunions. To this man (and his wife) this was something more. Here was a man who has been living his life and stumbled into learning about where he came from, learning about some of those stories. What he learned started as small scraps of information, and as it grew, it became a scrapbook, and then two published books. Clearly, while we were there to talk about the iPad, *I* was there to learn about the importance of the narrative of our families.

Our time together lasted about two hours. That was certainly enough time to talk about features within his iPad, learn more about the family members he found (including a recent cousin), and talk some about my family and the depth of knowledge that I come into from time to time about mine. An aside: I recently attended the funeral of a great, great aunt – I learned that I had cousins as old as 80 on the same line as I am; I learned about the church my family’s ancestors started where we had the service; and, I walked on the family grave where my great, great aunt was buried beside the other brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and parents that make the foundation that became me and the family that I know today.

That time was short, and his eyes opened up at what really is possible on the iPad. Yes, it felt like a TV that he could carry around, but things such as not needing to pull out a credit card to make purchases, trying to remember passwords for AppleID and iTunes accounts, and how to go about looking for applications and downloading them were valuable. You should have seen his eyes even when we did a search for genealogy applications and he saw Ancestry.com’s application there. To know that he wasn’t limited to just working on his family tree on his laptop was freeing – it pushed him forward just a bit. The ease at which he could do it showed him just how far things have come since what he is familiar with on his laptop. The time we spent together was short.

We parted with the intention of getting together again to refresh on some points, and continue to swap stories about our families. He gave me a task to find (one of) the family record books that I know exists so that he could see how my family has gone about documenting our foundations.

I realized when we finished that Apple had just announced version 2 of the iPad. Even though were were on version 1, there was a world before us that this device, as well as mobile phones, Internet, TV, and radio, have allowed us to discover and learn from. I came out of that short time realizing that technology might indeed move forward, but its advances are nothing compared to how we’ve moved forward. For this man and his wife, that iPad became relevant because it could play a part in helping him keep the story of his family in the mouth of his family to come. If new devices and services can manage to help us keep that perspective, then there’s a good chance that our short time on this earth will indeed be well spent advancing the lives of others.

Image from: Irish Quality Gifts