My mom would have loved Google Earth and all the travel websites. She was very shy in person but I bet she’d get a kick out of message boards too. And social gaming! And connecting with schoolmates on Facebook.
She died in 1995 so she really missed out on all of it. I can see her being addicted to the internet, to be honest, and we’d be sitting side by side on our computers all night long.
My dad (68) loves eBay as well- he’s always been a bit of a bargain shopper and a great peruser of junk to find the odd valuable bit, and eBay’s like a huge online bazaar for that kind of thing.
My mom(65) loves, and I mean LOVES her iPad. She checks email, reads news articles, looks stuff up, etc… all the time. It just took the right interface and physical form factor for the wonders of computing and the internet to appeal to her, because my parents have had an internet connection, various PCs and laptops for more than a decade now, but it took the iPad to get her interested.
My grandfather would have loved the giant flat-screen TVs and the sports packages you can get via satellite. When I was a kid he bought one of the early large-screen projection TVs. He’d sit in his den watching one game on the big TV, another game on a 12-inch TV, and listen to a third game over the radio with a single earphone.
My grandmother would have loved the Harry Potter books. She’d probably have loved a Kindle, too.
My grandparents are all alive but it seems like they’re not that interested in anything modern. They have access to computers, cell phones, the internet, satellite TV, etc. but just never use it. They prefer to walk down to the market, read the newspaper, take a nap, play mahjong, and pretty much strictly activities that they’ve been doing for the past 50 years. The most modern piece of equipment they use with regularity might be the microwave. Maybe the metro? Hell, one of my grandmothers still prefers to wash clothes by hand and hang it to dry. I can’t imagine the great-grandparents being much different.
I suppose if anything, it’d be medical treatment. Some people are just old fashioned I suppose.
My parents both died in 1999.
Dad would have loved Google…he was the type of guy who would read everything…he would have been scouring the Internet and finding obscure pages and references to things nobody else could have or would have found. However, he would not have fallen for any scams or glurge - he was pretty good at smelling a rotten fish from miles away and would not be one of those passing along misinformation.
Both of them would have loved flat screen, large TV’s and the DVR. Watching shows in a large format, whenever they wanted to watch them? That would have made them quite happy.
They also both loved to travel - and I can see my father and mother checking out every travel site and booking last minute flights and hotels to some great place and not even letting us know they were gone until we would get some email from Thailand or wherever letting us know the weather was great.
Oh, and dad would have been thrilled to pay bills and keep his accounts through online banking. He was also the guy who pretty much always knew where every penny was spent, so having access to that 24/7 would have been great - and I pity any company who might have overcharged him a nickel, as he would discover that in no time and let them know in no uncertain terms.
And somehow, I think all of our Christmas gifts would have been purchased through Amazon and other online sites. They knew what they wanted and would have found it far faster and easier to order it online (probably in August) to make sure they got exactly what they wanted and the best price.
And dad would have been the King Of Texts…whenever you called, you were lucky to get four words out of him before he would say, “here’s you mother”…and hand the phone over to her. Texting would have been perfect:
“Happy Birthday dad!”
“Thanks”
That would have been ample for him.
Both my parents are still alive, in their mid-eighties. One thing my dad loves is that the Met now simulcasts operas in our local (art) movie theaters, so he doesn’t have to fly across the country to hear great opera. Also the tickets are a lot cheaper.
My maternal grandmother (died in '94) always wanted to travel, but never had the means.
She would buy these Time-Life travel picture books to see all the places she wanted to go, consequence of which she had a lot of books (cool ones, about foreign lands and places, with lots of good color pictures) taking up a lot of space in her tiny home.
I think she would have appreciated PC’s and the internet, to virtually visit these places, read up about them, and even save pictures to her PC to look at.
Mom (died '03, age 70) never quite figured out e-mail.
Dad (86 y/o) can’t be bothered; he sees a remote controlled antenna TV/VCR as the pinnacle of technology.
I think my mother would have enjoyed the apparently endless flood of police/court procedural shows; she was a fan of such things. She would probably have loved streaming video, smartphones, and social media as well.
My father is still alive and now in his 70s. He’s loves the sheer volume of information available online now. He’s been known to spend hours wiki-walking, and laments the unavailability of broadband at his house, which prevents him from loading stuff as fast as he’d like. I’ve recently introduced him to TED Talks and www.khanacademy.org. Other things–online shopping (a huge jump from being mostly limited to stuff available in our middle-of-nowhere home town) and finding new music are pretty high on his list.
The biggest single thing, though? E-readers. His first-gen Nook can hold thousands of books, so he can (and does) carry a whole library with him wherever he goes.
My mother would have loved cheap phone calls. She was addicted to long distance phone calls and could not confine herself to a 3 minute (=$3, equivalent to maybe $30 today), but would go on for 20 minutes, a half hour, whatever. It drove my father (who had to struggle with the bills every month) mad. On the other hand, she found email mysterious. In 1989-90, I passed a sabbatical living with her and use email extensively and she could not comprehend what was going on. I think she considered it a form of letter writing, which she was not good at.
My parents are alive and well, but I think my grandparents that have passed away would have been equally enamored with Skype and GPS. Being able to see your grandkids every day? Magic. And I think my grandpa would have laughed himself stupid if he got in the car with me one day and I had a computer monitor that gave me directions, like a tiny butler that lives inside a map or something.
My only grandparent (paternal grandmother, PGF passed away in the 40’s. Mom was an orphan) that I was fortunate enough to interact with, passed away long before computers became common, every day items.
My Dad (passed away on 11/17/12, a month shy of 78) rather enjoyed the ease with which information could be found with the Internet, as long as I was the one doing the looking. :smack:
He also liked having/using a cell phone, as long as it was just making/receiving phone calls. He absolutely abhorred text messaging.
My Mom (74), is relatively technoliterate, for the most part. 
My mom recently died. One of our last conversations was her asking advice on whether I would recommend an iPad or a Kindle for e-book reading. Since I was a computer nerd from the mid-70s on, she got to experience the home/personal computer revolution from the early days, and stayed pretty current up to the end.
Turns out she was pretty well wired by the time she passed away. After her death, my stepfather was having issues with the tech in the home, and asked for my assistance in troubleshooting things. Got there, and found that she’d managed to set up: cable with Internet access, a wireless router, several desktops and laptops, a big screen HDTV (with Wi-Fi), Blu-Ray (with Wi-Fi), a 5.1 surround sound setup, a newish Roku, a DVR, Google voice for the various phones, etc. Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Prime subscriptions. A PSP Vita at her bedside. She hadn’t managed to get to smartphones, e-readers, or tablets before passing away, but was looking at them at the time.
I think her favorite thing, and one which she would have enjoyed as it became ever more prevalent, was convergence of technology. No more carrying a library card, a video rental card, having to be home at a certain time to watch a certain show on a single device in the living room, missing phone calls, etc. Pay bills automatically without needing to check the mail, deposit checks without going to a bank. I think she simply would have been delighted to continue to see how far technology could continue to go to make her life more fun.