So I decided to get my 67 year old mom a computer. She is quite bright and a fast learner, but she’s always been intimidated by “technology”. She used to phone me long distance everytime she rented a video to ask:
Mom_Crayons: “The movie is over, now what do I do?”
Eats_Crayons: “Hit ‘stop’ then ‘rewind,’ Ma. Just like last time. It’s just like a tape recorder!”
Basically, she needed a glorified typewriter that let’s her surf the net. I got her a used iMac. We have relatives who never fail to send around the latest virus – Mac’s are less susceptible. It is very much a “one button to turn it on and way you go machine.”
She’s pretty sharp, so in less than an hour she went from “what does ‘font’ mean”? to being able to compose, format, spell check and print off a letter without any intervention by me.
On to the Internet!
I showed her how to log on to the ISP, use the bookmarks/favourites I’d set up for her.
Again, she learned quickly. From total neophyte
Mom_Crayons: “What is that thing?” (The “@” symbol.)
to being able to send and receive mail at Yahoo! and even add attachments (still has trouble downoading attachments, but we’re working on it.) She can do White Pages searches, look up medical info, and read the international newspapers online.
As a good Doper, I then introduced her to Google. Oh, what a horrible mistake!
My SO, Sniffs_Markers, is a pseudo celebrity. So to show how Google works, ranking results by relevence, I thought that would be a good start. I typed “Sniffs_Markers” into Google and up popped several results-- the official page as well as many that made reference to Markers.
Eats_Crayons: “See, Ma? You type in keywords for what you’re looking for. A person’s name, the title of a book, even a line of poetry. And it lists webpages that contain those terms.”
Mom_Cryons looks bewildered. Stares at the screen.
Eats_Crayons: “See? Google shows you a few lines of text from the website so you can try to determine if the site is relevent to your search or not.”
Mom_Crayons blinks, looks at the screen.
Eats_Crayons: “Then you can click on the links and it will take you to the webpage.” (Clicks on Sniff_Markers link, up pop’s Markers’s official site.)
Mom_Crayons blinks, looks at the screen.
Eats_Crayons: “Is there something you don’t understand…”
Mom_Crayons: “…You mean, if I want to find out if any of my old friends have webpages, I just have to type their names into Google?..”
Eats_Crayons: "Uh… "
Mom_Crayons: “Try one! Try one!”
We entered the name of one of her highschool friends from the 1950s (a former highschool sweetheart, I think.) Up popped a bunch of links, mostly about some professor.
Mom_Crayons: (looks at the Google descriptions) “That’s him! He teaches there!” (Tries one, gets his professional bio.) “Can I print this?” click! click! click!
In the middle of the page was one that said “homepage of Mom_Friend” she carefuly dragged the mouse to the link and clicked. Up popped his homepage, including a big JPG photo of a little old man and his wife.
Mom_Crayons: "That’s him! That’s him! Ha! Look at him! Ha! Ha! Do another! Do another!"
(grabs mouse, maniacally…) click! click! click! click!
Instant cyberstalker? Oh, Dopers, I have opened a Pandora’s Box! Og, helps us all! I have unleashed my mom on to all of cyberspace!