How Many Computerphobes do you know?

I know quite a few. My mother wouldn’t touch a computer to save her life. She’s only in her 60’s and quite healthy so she could live another 30 years and still never use one. All of the other females in my family keep in touch by email and send photos and such, except her.

Many people I work with are scared of them too, especially the internet. Why, on the Internet, you get your identity stolen and the axe-murderers can find your address and come get you! And if you’re crazy enough to online date, why then you just deserve to get axe-murdered, now don’t you? They have this concept of the internet as being a bunch of weirdos telling all kinds of lies and selling porn. There’s not really any news or real factual things, nope just weirdos and pervs.

I try to enlighten them, and amaze them with my prowess and tales of proficiency, i. e. I haven’t ordered a pizza over the phone in years and I don’t even have to go to the DMV to renew my registration. I regale them with my ability to find the answer to any question I may possibly conceive, pay bills for free, and get movies delivered to my very mailbox. They will have none of it, why the internet is the Devil’s plaything!

WTF! How long do we have to deal with these people, another 30 years?!

Do you know a lot of people like this? How do you deal with them? Just don’t discuss it?

Yeah I figure it will be about 30 years before today’s computerphobes begin to fade out of existence, but in that time we’ll see a whole new breed of technophobes - people who can’t let go of the way things are being done today. A neverending cycle.

However, I don’t actually know a lot of technophobes, but I think that’s more because the people I meet all tend to be the result of technology in the first place. Living in a country where I don’t know very many people at all, all my networking seems to take place through email, etc., so it kind of rules out technophobia from the outset.

This describes my FIL perfectly! A few years ago, we got my in-laws a computer for Christmas, because my FIL likes to write articles for a Ham radio magazine. We also wanted to give them a year of internet access. Well, he uses the computer as a word processor (and my MIL plays solitaire on it), but he will not have the internet. He’s extremely paranoid about it. But he’s really the only person I know that hasn’t gotten on board with the whole interned thing. I do remember that when we first got connected, oh, ten years ago or so, everyone said “The internet?? Whaddaya want that for?” I told them in a few years they’d have it, too. They didn’t believe me then. But now they all have it.

Dozens of them, and they aren’t fading out. I deal with college students, and there are plenty of them who know next to nothing about computers. Not scared, but unwilling or unable to do anything other than the most basic functions.

I know one man, a retired electrician in his late 50s, who won’t have a computer in his house. He’s sure that the speakers can be used as a listening device by…somebody.

Aside from him, I know lots of people who simply aren’t techno-competent. Devices much simpler than computers baffle them. These are folks who probably shouldn’t get computers.

My mother is a thorough technophobe. When her remote needs new batteries I have to reprogram it for her. I’ve tried showing her how to enter the codes, but it’s always “too damn complicated!” Any procedure with more than 3 steps, really, is “too damn complicated!”

So I haven’t even tried introducing her to computers. Too bad; she doesn’t get out much anymore, and there’s a lot of stuff on the Internet she would love.

My neighbor got a brand new computer with a flat panel monitor, super fast video card and all the bells and whistles for Christmas…Christmas 2004!!! It was basically gathering dust until we got her a wireless router so she could share our internet connection. I hooked it up for her, which was a snap. Now she uses it mainly to forward funny emails to people. I’d love to trade her for my slow as molasses 256MB of RAM and integrated video card computer!!

Here at the office (where we use computers for 99.9% of all of our work) the lady that sits next to me refuses to learn how her computer will help her job be easier. She WRITES DOWN everything and files stuff on little cards in her desk. She barely knows how to log into the thing. I tried to teach her how to use “cut and paste” to save her retyping stuff, but she just waved me off and said it was too difficult. :eek: