In my experience, the contrast is stark to another high-paid professional group: lawyers.
>In my experience, the contrast is stark to another high-paid professional group: lawyers.
Database systems like WestLaw & word processing systems in the 80s and 90s were killer apps for law offices, so if lawyers are tech illiterate it's a recent phenomenon.
I remember WordPerfect being very popular in law offices, but also dictation machines, so who knows?
There was a period during which PCs (as well as other word processors) were coming in when computers were seen as being increasingly important (in law and elsewhere) but the management at many companies weren't sold on it being a good ROI for professionals, especially those billing by the hour, to use them directly.
There was definitely a period of time in many places where there were computers but it was secretaries/paralegals/etc. who actually typed on them. And, remember, a lot of young professionals in the late 1980s had never really learned to type, even hunt and peck.
I know several doctors my age and younger that cannot stand using any computer or laptop, while my best friend’s father, a surgeon, had one of the first HP color flatbed scanners (SCSI) and the only person I knew to have an ISDN line.
My cousin is about a decade older than me, and I remember spending the night at his house with his TRS-80 and Apple II computers. He is an attorney.