I get a bunch of people also that just don’t want to learn anything new. “I have a block on it, I just can’t.” And you can see by the set look on their faces they are stubbornly refusing to learn.
I hope I never give up my youth that much that I downright refuse to learn new things. I don’t mean for optional things. I don’t know all of the features of my cellphone either - but I don’t need them. What irritates me is say, when it’s a requirement for the job they are doing, and they flat-out refuse to learn anything.
But I suppose that drives me batty in the young and old, so it’s not just an old person thing.
This is what I was going to say. The ability to rewire is, I think, something that can be wired over time. Case in point is my grandfather, who has been a tinkerer all his life, and who seems to pick up a new hobby every few years. He’s 90, and I enjoy getting his daily “hey family, here’s what’s going on with me” email. It’s basically a blog, except he clicks Send instead of Save. I really do believe the “learning muscles” can be stretched and worked to keep them supple, but it requires constant effort. For this reason, I’m considering starting classes in a foreign language, not because I have any great practical need for it, but just to keep the “this is new stuff!” neurons active.
It is harder to use electronic gadgets because they print labels in fine, sans-Serif type that’s light eggshell grey on a dark eggshell grey background, or use farfetched symbols that usually look to me like another symbol (why does Windows show me an apple core when it’s doing something?). It’s harder to fiddle with tiny keys and touchy mice. But my vision and fine motor control are noticeably worse now than 20 years ago.
And, I do feel somewhat less motivated to learn how to use new Windows features. I’ve already learned JCL, CPM, DOS, BSD, SVR4, SunView, SunOS, and Windows 3.1 and 95 and 98 and NT and 2000 and XP (Home and Pro). If you think you’re learning the future, you’re motivated, but if you think you’re learning another round of the same old game, and it’s only going to last a couple years, well, much less so.
I can learn new things, certainly, and am having a blast learning the object oriented C family of programming languages for writing Windows programs. Though I don’t have quite the pickup I did at 20. This topic, though, is fascinating because it speaks to the difficult problem of explaining the treatment of difficult problems. I see what all the fuss has been about.
Dear Young Whippersnapper:
In my town the slow pokes are usually cholos in their low riders going 15 mph and looking at the chicas.
Now, get off my lawn.
Well, by now the OP probably realizes that not all geezers are deficient with high tech gadgets, and many younger people are.
Me, I started in computers in 1981, built stereo amps, pre-amps, tuners and other things from kits (yeah, had to solder all the wires), have built numerous computers from scratch. I am a techno-phreak and love high-tech gadets.Still do some computer consulting for lamebrains of all ages who get stuck right after Windows boots.
I know a large number of scientists, engineers and computer experts still sharp as tacks in their 70s and older.
I also started astronomy as a hobby in my late 60s and now am interested in and working with a digital microscope. Before moving to Arizona (which has no daylight savings time), twice a year most of my friends brought me their digital watches, as they could not figure out how to change time, so had to do it for them. Each stupid watch had a different system, but easy to figure out.
And, I’ll be 80 in August. Perhaps when I get old, I’ll be better able to answer your question about why geezers can’t learn stuff.
I got a cell phone last fall after the !@#$%^&*() Bell Canada couldn’t schedule a repair for a week (now that I have a choice, I get my internet, TV, phone service all from the cable company). So I used it for a week and have used it only once since (it is pay as you go and the minutes I bought have long expired). Why? Well, I don’t really have much use for it at home and it doesn’t work in the States. It is full of features that I haven’t learned and probably would have no use for. What I really need is to be able to set the volume to high and have it stay there, but no it has to reset for each call. And I don’t now remember, after 6 months of non-use, how to raise the volume anyway.
A couple months ago, my VCR broke. I know that is obsolete but we have lots of tapes and I wanted to be able to see them. So we got a new one. The controls are nearly incomprehensible. Once you have set up the programs you want to record, the way to turn on the record function is to press the “Timer” button. What genius thought that up. It is supposed to set the clock automatically, but once I reset the daylight savings by hand, I cannot reenable that feature. I even tried unplugging it for a couple hours to revert to the original state, but it must have a small battery because it kept its programming. It also doesn’t have an index function that the old one had. Inferior in every way.
I have owned and used a computer for 25 years and email for about 22 of them. (Yeah, bitnet!) At the beginning, I wrote a number of programs including little assembly language “terminate & stay resident” programs such as clock in the upper right corner. This is unthinkable today. Windows is much too complicated.
The real problem is that many things are much too complicated. With incomprehensible controls.
Incidentally, it works both ways. I recently saw a girl of about 12 who had to ask her mother to read a dial clock. I don’t know about others, but I can take in a dial clock at a glance, while I have to actually look at a digital clock. And I can work a slide rule faster than anyone can use a calculator, while most kids have never heard of slide rules. And a friend of mine just marked a calculus final in which students were asked to evaluate a definite integral whose answer came to 4 - 1/6. Not allowed calculators, they tried to evaluate it by hand. Aside from 23/6 they came up with no fewer than seven ways of doing it wrong!
Preface: I’ve taught computer classes for senior citizens and they were all over the place in terms of learning abilities and experience.
I think motivation and patience are the primary reasons that us oldsters have some problems with new technology. Using my 64 year old self as an example, I am comfortable with most aspects of computer software Microsoft Office applications, email, etc) and some hardware work like upgrading memory, installing wireless cards and so forth. I am an avid digital camera operator, do geocaching with my GPS, and listen to music that I’ve ripped and downloaded to my Rio player. And so forth.
On the other hand, my VCR time light still reads 12:00; I don’t use the DVD player on my larger screen TV as I would rather use my computer or the small TV, I only use some of the functions on my cell phone, and so forth. And I don’t know how to use our dryer. Currently I’m learning how to repair watches.
Why the discrepancies? I learn what I use and am interested in…just like anyone of any age. Of course, I’m not as quick at learning new things as my two sons…and very little is intuitive to me. This is probably related to seeing the first non-tube radios while in high school, and the first calculator while in college, and my first computer when I was in my fifties.
Many of us do not want to adopt the new stuff for a number of reasons, one of which is a lack of ability.
A poster above noted that people may just want to use what they already can survive with; most of us don’t have job requirements that include the newest technology. I would add that some oldsters are eager to learn how to use the new toys. So we vary just like your age group, whatever that might be
I have a small solution for teaching computer skills to older people; make them sit in the operator’s seat and press the buttons, click the mouse and make screen prints of what they’ve done. If they refuse, go home until they agree to try. I had to do this with my mom. She wanted to learn how to create emails and use her address book, but she wanted me to do the work and tell her how to do it. No way, the only way you can learn new skills is to do the work yourself. She wasn’t happy when I made her look at the screen and make her choices, and all I did was tell her what to do. It’s the same thing when you need to know how to drive to a new location; you don’t learn the directions until you, yourself are driving and really learn the route. I realize my solution isn’t really touchy feely so feel free to ignore my advice. It’s just that, your elderly relatives will only learn to call you to come over and do the work, instead of learning how to do the work themselves if they don’t push the buttons and click the mouse.
Not in my experience. If there is an office worker who has been there since before computers, then they may well have skills enough to get by without using the computer. I knew one exec in a tech intensive company who had a 386 in 1998 because the company did not upgrade it because he never used it. He had skill making deals and maintaining relationships that let him take a pass at the email thing. I tried to train him on using email and I had no success. Ultimately it was a combination of lack of motivation and lack of being used to learning new things.
OTOH, a manual laborer who has had to have several jobs over the years can do just fine on the computer. The difference is on who has had to learn how to learn new things and kept up with that skill. My mom, who did housekeeping, waitressing, and factory work from assembly line to welding, is quite computer savvy and has become tech support for the less savvy but trying members of our family.
I taught computer classes in a bank to all levels of workers. The only thing that older people consistently had trouble learning was double clicking. Apparently holding the mouse still long enough to click twice is a challenge. Changing the mouse speed did not help much either. For the most part they had to get by clicking once and then hitting enter. Other than double clicking, age was not much of a factor in how well they learned. How dependent their future employment was on learning, and how often they had to learn new things was.
I was in CVS today and they had a special on supersized remote controls. The thing was literally about 1 foot long and 8 inches wide. Each button was about the size of a small cracker. I am pretty sure the market is older people but I would think it would be hysterical for anyone to use the thing seriously. The bonus is that you can’t really lose it because it is larger than most things in the house.
My brother, who had multiple sclerosis, used an oversized remote control for his television. For a person who enjoys television but lacks the coordination or visual acuity to use a normal-sized remote control, these things are a godsend.
It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between people who just can’t be bothered to read books and people who can’t learn new technology.
