When the subject of careers came up, my father and I experienced a rather frustrating disconnect. He wanted me to go into computers but I often complained (whined) that I wanted to do something meaningful with my life. But the real problem – you may have already caught it – was that my father’s understanding of computers was lacking to the point that might say something like, “go into computers.” He wouldn’t encourage either computer engineering or computer science. He wouldn’t specify web development or software development or financial technology or graphic design or database administration. He just knew that I should be in computers because, in his mind, in the future, “Everything is going to be computers.” It’s not an incorrect assertion, just a vague one that betrays any real knowledge of computers. He passed away before the ubiquity of smartphones but I know that, “You know what you should do? Make an app,” would have been Dad’s Career Advice 2.0.

I hear how I’m describing him and I almost feel like what should follow is something to the effect of, “My father was a simple man and he worked himself to the bone providing for Ma and me…” But that’s not the case at all. My father had a Ph D in materials science engineering. He was a left brained man and you could set your watch by his routines. Any mathematical ability that I have – and I’ll go ahead and brag that there’s a fair amount – comes from him (while my father’s computer knowledge remained general, my mother’s remained non-existent, she was painfully computer illiterate from birth until death, mystified by concepts such as the mouse and the cursor and the graphical user interface of any personal computer).

My father grew up in Sheffield, England, an industrial town that produced steel. He didn’t head straight to college after high school. He got a job where he worked in metallurgy. He had mentors and went to university one day a week until he finally earned a bachelor’s degree at age twenty-nine. He came to the U.S. to study, earning a master’s degree from Cornell, then a PhD from Lehigh.

He was a smart man who was probably just born a little too early to really get computers.

“Remember to turn it off when you’re done,” he’d say.

“Dad, you’re actually not supposed to turn off your computer every single time you use it. Constantly re-booting it is pretty inefficient.”

“Well, I don’t want to get a virus.”

“Dad, that’s not how viruses work.”

I think I disappointed him when I explained what it is that I actually do.

“It’s front end web development, so, I write the HTML for the display layer of web pages.”

“Oh. I thought you were going to be creating mathematical models of different products.” I truly had no idea what he was talking about but I knew that he had probably worked with AutoCAD at Kodak.

“No, that would be more like software development. I would have needed to study computer science for that.”

“Oh.”

One Christmas, I thought it would be nice to help him out a bit, perhaps get some context. So, I bought him PCs for Dummies. He unwrapped his gift and held it in front of him to read the title as he did with all books. His expression remained unchanged. “Thank you,” he said, laying the book down at his feet. I think I may have insulted him.

Towards the end of his life he told me that he would have wanted to go to business school if he could do it all over again. Being an entrepreneur appealed to him but he had so many decades as an industrial engineer, it was hard to make the switch.

Apparently I’m an Xennial, meaning that I was raised without technology but I adapted to it as a young adult. I guess that’s accurate. I’ve never been an early adopter of any technology. I was twenty-four when I got my first cell phone. I let a few generations of iPods and iPhones go before I bought either. I like other people to figure out the bugs before I throw down my hard earned cash for anything.

I can see my own understanding reaching an endpoint. There are already new frameworks and languages that are beyond my understanding, let alone things like big data and AI and machine learning and AR and VR. I don’t know what data I’m giving away daily just by using social media. I try not to think about it, honestly.

We came to something of a truce at one point. He had given me his usual spiel about computers, how cars would be run by computers, and how, “Everything will be computers.” I responded, “Dad, the point of engineering all of these computers is so users have a seamless experience. It’s so you don’t have to know code to use these things. I mean, you don’t have to be a mechanic to drive a car.”

“Okay.”

“And you have to click on something in order to get a virus, like a phishing email or something. You have to take an action for that to happen.”

“Just turn it off when you’re done using it.”

“Okay.”