There's a great anecdote about that in the book _Dealers of Lightning_, where the Xerox execs were indifferent to a demo of the Star personal computer but their wives were ecstatic about it.

These things have a self-reinforcing feedback loop -- consider also for example, men learning to use "power tools" but not a sewing machine.

I don't know why you're being downvoted, this is absolutely true.

I had a boss early in my career (around 1990) who considered typing effeminate and was mildly horrified at what the world was coming to with all us guys who were cheerfully using a keyboard. He had a secretary who did all his typing. This was ~5 years before email became common, but I'm sure he would have had all his emails printed so he could read them properly.

There is a generation of people that are unique insofar as having grown up with handwriting on pen and paper (with cursive!) in school while also having typing/computing classes and access to the internet at a young age. Of course, people could type before computers, though it was a specialist skill more often than not, and kids certainly have every opportunity to pick up both handwriting and touch typing today, but the balance of it all isn't quite the same is it?

I’m in my mid forties. If VR/ar devices like the Apple Vision Pro were to go mainstream, I can’t imagine myself learning how to use it effectively as a daily driver device to get work done. Heck, even the Internet, I’m pretty sure my relationship with it is more of wary scepticism than most people in their thirties.

I can see why someone who never used email until their fifties would never get fully comfortable with it.