The World Wide Web, smartphones, laptops, check-card banking, e-mail, e-books, pocket-sized audio players, GPS devices and other new modern marvels are here to stay. And they are going to keep coming.

To live in the 21st century, people must get to know the technology.

If the automobile had just been invented and was to hit stores tomorrow, would you be one of those people who would say, “I’m still going to ride my horse”?

Admit it. No, you wouldn’t.

In the 20th century, Americans embraced technological advances. Automobiles. Washing machines. Vacuums. Radios and stereos. Televisions. Refrigerators. The list goes on.

But in the 1990s, 2000s and now 2010s, it seems there is a point at which many people have said, “Enough!”

Everyone knows who we are talking about. Folks who say, “I don’t do the Internet,” and, “I don’t have e-mail.”

They are the Luddites, people who refuse to embrace technological advances.

They like their 20th century lifestyle and don’t want to advance beyond it.

And while that might be fine and well for them, they should not expect the world to bend to their way of living forever. They should not fuss if something is available via a technology they won’t embrace. It’s like grumbling about how the dishes from a neighbor’s dishwasher are cleaner, yet refusing to acknowledge the benefits of a dishwashing machine.

Eventually, people have to get on board or be OK with falling so far behind there is no hope to catch up.

That’s why we predict the people who will live deep into the 21st century won’t ever get the opportunity to decide where they are satisfied with technology and stop. As technology changes, they will change. And they will keep on changing with it deep into their retirement years.

In other words, the need to learn new things will never stop.

Of course, technology will become so advanced that it will become much easier for them to change with it as technology changes. But the speed of the changes will become astonishing. That will be the hard part.

Indeed, the future is here.