Can you offer a cite on that? I’ve never seen cursive as more efficient. Maybe it’s due to insufficient practice, but some cursive letters seem more complex, which doesn’t lead to efficiency. My own handwriting is a mix of cursive and print when time is an issue.
They don’t trust 'em. My dad can’t believe I have paperless billing. “You don’t FILE anything?” “If I need it, it’s online.” “… but they just take your money out? What if they take too much?” “Then I call and raise holy hell. Hasn’t happened yet, and the risk is worth it to me not to have to deal with the hassle or forget and send something in late.” “But… you don’t file anything?”
Ha. Don’t tell him we moved off the gold standard. “But it isn’t MONEY! It’s all just PAPER! It isn’t REAL!”
So my mother turned 65 this year. Computers may have been around for twenty years, but why in the world would she be lazy and ignorant for never having had a reason to learn about them? She was a SAHM, none of us kids were into computers when we were younger, so we wouldn’t have been teaching her either. She managed her career of raising us kids and running a household just fine without the internet at her fingertips. At what magical point should she have developed an interest and made a major financial investment and time commitment learning about something she didn’t need to use or have an interest in?
My father’s a retired carpenter, at some point the people he worked for started using computers, but he managed to finish his entire career using the same skills he always had.
What about hotel maids? Truck stop waitresses? Shelf stockers? Garbage collectors? There are any number of blue collar workers who never felt a need, hell maybe they did but had zero familiarity and couldn’t afford to just plunk down the $$ to try and get on the bandwagon, so they’re all lazy and ignorant?
No cite, just my own experience. If I’m trying to write on a post-it note I might jot it down haphazardly but if I write a page, like a letter, I write cursive, which causes me less fatigue.
YMMV.
Well, I would say that reading the directions for an Xbox game doesn’t qualify as “reading something” 
I encourage my kids to read books, but also magazine and newspaper articles. I even encourage them to learn how to get information from TV (they are 10 and 12 and they watched some of the VP debates with me) and they know how to use Google. You’ve got to have a lot of tools in the box.
I would be encouraged to find this to be the case. Can you cite one that is freely available?
I can’t find anything online and my textbook is at home, so I’ll post the study it gives later.
Generally people use age as an excuse for everything as they get older:
-not staying in shape
-not learning new technologies or processes
-not actively progressing in their career
-staying in crappy relationships
-etc
-etc
People get comfortible in their situation as they get older. They might not like it, but at least it’s predictable.
That’s why companies tend not to want to hire old people. They think they will come in, act like they know everything, be fifteen years out of synch with everyone else and resist change.
I like how the further we go the we still come full circle. Moving pictures:)
Seriously. Then why in Hell would we even think about hiring a 72 year old guy for President. I’m not kidding. There is no company on earth that would consider hiring anyone within about 5 years of retirement and we wanna make the oldster our Prez…Helloooooo? Oh, well, maybe he can use his age as an excuse for lazy ignorance!
I don’t know you or your family so I’m not up to any analysis of why an entire clan of people would be so absolutely incurious about something that was changing the face of the planet. Also FWIW computers have been very affordable for some time now and are not wildly expensive by any stretch of the imagination. Entire, brand new net ready setups have been available for less than $ 600 (or less in many cases) for well over 10 years.
Re the blue collar, waitress, etc. workers I find them as inquisitive, engaged and computer adept as anyone. Computers are dirt cheap and have been for some time and practically everyone uses them. For someone who was 40ish or 50ish in the 80’s and 90’s to decide to stick their heads in the sand for 10 or 20 years is simply a bit beyond my understanding,
I think I understand your frustrations when dealing with people in business that are proud of their inability to perform basic functions they should be able to. But to damn everyone is a different thing entirely, it really is.
$600 is a lot of money to plenty of folks, not to mention paying for net access, that’s a commitment I can see people not jumping into without a compelling interest. The hypothetical blue collar 50ish wage slave isn’t going to go get an entire system that cheaply, if they don’t have the knowledge and experience to know what they need or don’t need the Computer Planet salesdrone is going to techno speak right over their heads and either confuse them into thinking “I can’t learn this” or try to sell them way more system than they can afford, or need. And those are only the ones that have an interest in computers to begin with.
Automobiles changed the face of the planet, yet we still have Dopers that don’t own one. They don’t find a need, based on where they live, expenses, responsibility, whatever their reasons we don’t think of them as lazy and ignorant. They made choices to fit their lifestyles and I don’t mind one tiny bit less traffic.
Cable television changed entertainment forever, news is reported instantly and policies are decided in DC by how they’ll look on CNN, do you think folks that choose to not have cable are ignorant or lazy?
Unless watching television or driving impact how well they can function in a business setting, it’s too large of a generalization.
I agree. I don’t look down my nose at younger folks who don’t know how to cook or sew or grow tomatoes or build a birdhouse or play pinochle or whatever. It’s their choice, how they spend their time and money.
If you want grandma to learn how to use a computer and she says “No thanks, I’m too old”, maybe she’s just being nice. She probably knows that saying “Sorry, I’m really not interested” wouldn’t end the conversation. Sure, you might think she’s missing out, but maybe she thinks you’re missing out too. Are you going to say “Sure, let’s do it!” when she asks if you want to learn to use the sewing machine or bake a pie from scratch? Didn’t think so.
I guess my main problem with people who refuse to learn to use a computer is that it really is more simple, easy, and less expensive.
There are some part of technology which you only need to use if it is relevant. I can understand not having an ipod or satellite radio if you don’t really care about music. I don’t have a GPS because I don’t get lost driving in my city.
But, a computer? I can do everything online. I can sell stocks or book a trip to New York. I can do these things **cheaper **online. I can reserve book at the library, renew my driver’s license, and file my income tax.
I can pay bills for free, move money from my bank account, and even find sex!
Yeah … but you aren’t going to get any of Granny’s sweet, sweet apple pie that way. You’ve got to show her a good time for that tasty dessert.
My grandpa turned 95 this August, and he’s perfectly computer literate. He made his living a butcher, was raised in a Brooklyn tenement by two people who couldn’t read.
In the mid-90s he told my father he wanted to “learn email”. My dad said “Pop, you don’t know anything about computers. If you did I’d buy you a machine.” My Dad heard nothing of it until a couple months later when Grandpa called and said he’d completed a class at his local community college in computers, and wanted to know where his machine was.
He thinks the elderly would feel less isolated if them embraced the internet-- and tells his friends when they complain about never talking to their grandkids that they should try IM. I swear, he’s out there being some other message board’s David Simmons.
I found it. It was a study done by the ALA in 2001 and it showed that 90% of all teen respondants liked to read books or magazines:
Are you kidding!? I’d LOVE to be taught sewing and the like! I take it I’m weird…
(I learned the pie thing a few weeks ago off the internet for fun and it turned out awesome, I really wish I could sew… from scratch… by HAND)
The thing is, unless a comet hits or an EMP wipes out all technology and we regress to the old standards where everyone needs to produce usable products no one will really need to know that stuff due to the fact that you can just BUY most things (unless you’re a nerd, do you have any idea how hard it is to find a non-Halloween quality cloak or robe?) Other than a smug (I mean that in the nicest way) sense of “I did it, lovingly handcrafted for you dear!” There’s not much reason to do it other than pass the time (which is fine in itself).
I suppose you could argue that computers aren’t necessary, but it makes things easier, if not better. Can’t reconcile your schedule with the kids but want to talk to them? Email. Need to know some facts? Google (or Snopes, depending). Can’t remember that recipe? Store it in a word document. If you’re not using the internet you’re really not keeping up with the world, and I don’t mean technologically, you’re almost literally living a day behind everyone else. People pack their schedules full because they can hold conversations remotely over hours of time, for better or for worse. You’re NEVER going to get through to most people unless you play their game.
That said, it’s FINE if they can’t use computers or all the little functions, my grandpa can’t use iTunes, which he wants to, (I tried… I really did). I just think that learning computers has more functional use than sewing, because access to information and communication like that really isn’t able to be bought in a store like the products of the activities you mentioned are. But hey, if they’re breathing and they’re happy and not hurting anyone (i.e. a business) with their refusal to learn who really cares?