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I meant simple in the sense that it would be a pretty straightforward way for me to help people like Ms. L. I doubt it would be in any way easy. And I taught

I meant simple in the sense that it would be a pretty straightforward way for me to help people like Ms. L. I doubt it would be in any way easy. And I taught my mother from basic computer illiteracy into practically a power user (well, a relative power user: email and surfing and transferring images from her digital camera. she's the envy of all her friends, at least...). The biggest hurdle was getting her to believe me that no matter what she did, she couldn't possibly harm the computer beyond my ability to repair it. I think a lot of people unfamiliar with computers think that it is very easy to irreparably damage them. It kind of discourages taking risks and trying to solve problems on your own. Once I made it clear that she could (and should) do whatever she wanted without fear, she picked it up extremely rapidly.

maximilian 18y ago
I was basically joshing you. I agree with you on that hurdle though. Most people think of computers as machines. If you use a machine incorrectly, or in the wrong order, you can break it or even injure yourself. Computers, usually at least, don't work that way. It'd be pretty hard for my parents to mess up the computer more than losing that email they just spent the last hour hunt-and-pecking away at.
- smelendez 18y ago
  I think that it's not only that older people didn't grow up with, say, the Windows interface or, as someone mentioned earlier, a telephone interface where you have to press send to make a call, it's an even more basic issue. They grew up in a world where machinery was expensive, fragile and dangerous and a world where adults seldom learned to operate fundamentally new machinery. Even sturdy, harmless household machinery wasn't safe to "play around" with. One reason you had to dial 1 to make a long distance call, even before exchanges and area codes overlapped, is to reduce the risk of misdialing or misunderstanding your way into a big bill. If you pick up the phone in the middle of the night and dial random numbers to figure out the numbering scheme and whether it takes longer to call cross-country, you'll get a big bill and, if you piss enough people off, get a visit from the police or a stern letter from the phone company. If you enter random URLs into your browser, you're unlikely to break anything. We (younger people) have an advantage in that we're used to pretty much everything being software driven, so we know that if we screw up our computer, phone or DVD player we can just pull the plug or the battery. We're also used to the idea that not every device will behave the same way to achieve the same function. We press "send" to "send" a call, but not to send an SMS message, even though the latter is standard usage and the former is not, but we don't care because we know that's how the UI works. And, we know that we'll have to keep learning new UIs as we get older. Older people don't have a problem dialing nine for an outside line, even though at home they just pick up the receiver, because they probably learned it in their 20s.

maximilian 18y ago

I was basically joshing you. I agree with you on that hurdle though. Most people think of computers as machines. If you use a machine incorrectly, or in the wrong order, you can break it or even injure yourself. Computers, usually at least, don't work that way. It'd be pretty hard for my parents to mess up the computer more than losing that email they just spent the last hour hunt-and-pecking away at.

smelendez 18y ago
I think that it's not only that older people didn't grow up with, say, the Windows interface or, as someone mentioned earlier, a telephone interface where you have to press send to make a call, it's an even more basic issue. They grew up in a world where machinery was expensive, fragile and dangerous and a world where adults seldom learned to operate fundamentally new machinery. Even sturdy, harmless household machinery wasn't safe to "play around" with. One reason you had to dial 1 to make a long distance call, even before exchanges and area codes overlapped, is to reduce the risk of misdialing or misunderstanding your way into a big bill. If you pick up the phone in the middle of the night and dial random numbers to figure out the numbering scheme and whether it takes longer to call cross-country, you'll get a big bill and, if you piss enough people off, get a visit from the police or a stern letter from the phone company. If you enter random URLs into your browser, you're unlikely to break anything. We (younger people) have an advantage in that we're used to pretty much everything being software driven, so we know that if we screw up our computer, phone or DVD player we can just pull the plug or the battery. We're also used to the idea that not every device will behave the same way to achieve the same function. We press "send" to "send" a call, but not to send an SMS message, even though the latter is standard usage and the former is not, but we don't care because we know that's how the UI works. And, we know that we'll have to keep learning new UIs as we get older. Older people don't have a problem dialing nine for an outside line, even though at home they just pick up the receiver, because they probably learned it in their 20s.