After 37 Years In Jail, This Guy Is Puzzled By His First Smartphone And Internet

Whether it’s computers, smartphones or other lifestyle gadgets, technology has improved at an amazing pace. Rise of mobile to the rise of smartphones, something that is truly indispensable in today's life, would be nothing short of magical instruments for our great-grandparents or generations gone by.

Reuters

This realization was recently made by a US man who came out of prison after nearly four decades, unable to fathom and make sense of all the tech advances that have happened in that time.

Reported first by NBCNews, it spoke about how prisoners react when they see a smartphone for the first time in their lives and the learning curve that they experience. This was more of a necessity since several platforms that are in place to help ex-prisoners get back on their life, are online.

One Renaldo Hudson who was released from the Danville Correctional Centre on September 2, after spending 37 years there, shared his experience. He spoke about how people would say smartphones were so simple to use and access the Internet, asking him to log in using the browser, and all he could think of was “who is this browser?”

A similar feeling was experienced by several inmates that were released as a form of compassionate release in 2019 to lessen the density of prisons, releasing prisoners close to the ends of their sentences or elderly and medically vulnerable prisoners who were more susceptible to contract the novel coronavirus.

Maria Burnett, a Washington DC-based human rights lawyer who helped by taking pro-bono compassionate release cases, said in a statement, "I thought I had thought about a lot of factors and had been really meticulous in thinking through the challenges he would face. I didn't realize how dependent all of those factors would be on his digital literacy."

Via NBC News

Kids becoming the tech gurus

Apart from seeking friends from adults in their families, former prisoners have actually learned a lot from the youngest family members. One Wendell Robinson was taken aback when he saw his two-year-old nephew had such a command of technology that he could only dream of.

Robinson revealed how the little ones were the biggest supporters to help him get this technology-wisdom, “My nieces and nephews, the little bitty kids, were like some of the best teachers when they came to helping me in, you know, those initial steps.”