The Rise of TechnoDad

From time immemorial, dads have not been expected to be at the forefront of technology. Rather they were good for nailing things, carrying stuff and drinking beer. Their family role was to be either strict or cuddly, but mostly quaint in clinging to old-fashioned ways. Kind of like Windows 3.1. Oh, look at dad trying to navigate all those remotes. He is so precious, so dad!

But I am here to claim that the days of dads who don't know how to extend a 5GHz wi-fi network through the whole house are over. Dads of today can still be called upon to hang an occasional picture, but really their major function is to provide and set up the tech their family desperately needs. Are you good at figuring out USB and HDMI ports, wrangling multitudes of cables and upgrading the operating systems? You are ready to be a dad! Can you schedule recurring DVR recordings and install a game server? You too can be a dad! Are you good at finding just the right app for the task and figuring out why you all have to buy this year's iPhone? You may be a dad. Are you making sure all virus protections are up to date, Facebook privacy settings are checked weekly and YouTube parental blocks are in place? Better shape up if being a dad is in your cards!

Perhaps one of the more traditional and gratifying modern applications of old-style dadhood is in utilizing your reservoir of patience on the endless spirals of foreign tech support representatives, punctuated by spasms of well-timed anger and unyielding insistence upon talking to the MANager. Proving to those faceless underpaid entities from the abyss that you are actually a human being that means business and deserves a credit is one of the pleasures in a dad's life.

Of course, being a dad is also about raising children and that's where being a TechnoDad can really pay off. You can use your skills and detailed knowledge of what the kids are up to these days to grant or deny them stuff it order to get them to do your bidding. You want to Skype with your friends for two hours? Do your homework and clean your room. You want to Snapchat? No way. You want to buy a gyro-balancing plank with wheels that people are calling a hoverboard for some reason? We can all get behind that plan. A family on hover boards is a happy family.

Even dad's body had to adjust to his new obligations, evolving into the infamous (and newly desirable) "dad bod". No longer having to swing the broadsword, his muscles shrank, but his midsection expanded to make him more suitable for prolonged sitting, required for such activities as anxiously scouring the online forums for answers to "why doesn't the darn thing work?"

In closing, I'd just like to point out that certainly being a dad these days has its specific challenges. Constantly changing and often hard to understand things our dads didn't have to contend with. But the rewards are also great. The look on your son's face when you finally manage to install a Minecraft mod that lets him incinerate sheep with lightning bolts is what life is all about.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.