Betcha I could, Tom, but I’m not exactly one of the “young” posters here at 35. But then, my 90 year old Grampa is also pretty technically savvy, although I’ve never seen him at an ATM. We’re an odd family, yes.
Well, I have my moments - but oddly it helps me to think better, for some reason. That and it adds to the challenge - it’s like chess; you can’t take back a move.
I’ve seen computer luddites of ALL ages. I’ve also found that there’s a certain level at which a person just ‘gives it up’.
I had a friend at work who was smart as a whip. Learned HTML and image editing and internet email but couldn’t grasp the programming necessary to move further than that.
My Grandfather is 93. Born in Glasgow Scotland in 1912, the town he grew up in didn’t have full power or running water to the whole town. He’s a little shaky on the concepts of CDs, but is okay with TVs and VCRs. I got him an internet terminal and taught him how to dail-up. He could see our wedding photos from the bookmark I made him, but the concept of email escaped him. I don’t hold it against him, based on what he HAS experienced (and continues to experience)
Keep in mind the physical limitations on the elderly. My mother is turning 80, and her vision is just not what it once was, even with the cataract surgery. Small buttons are extremely difficult for her to read, and her arthritis makes it hard to press buttons on a remote. She uses the ATM, but only during daylight hours and only the one she has to walk up to. It is too difficult to twist about in her seat to use a drive-up ATM, and then she has difficulty reading the choices in time. Add to that the fact that just when you get used to what button to push, they add a feature or rearrange the layout or upgrade the software, and you can’t push the same buttons in the same order any more.
I don’t have a cell phone, mainly because no one calls me anyways, but on the occasions I’ve had to use one, I find the tiny buttons difficult to see, and it’s hard to remember that the send button has to be pressed after the number, not before, on one model, and a different sequence on another.
CD’s and DVD’s are fine, but I have absolutely no use for an MP3 player. I do not need music playing constantly in my ears. I like silence, and listening to the world, and just don’t have time to search out and download music. I just don’t need a soundtrack to accompany my life.
The first phone call I ever made involved holding the receiver next to my ear, turning the crank and asking “Central” to connect me to the recipient of my call. When we moved to the city and I had to use a dial telephone, it took me a while to catch on. I didn’t use a computer until I was forty years old—now I can find my way around one*, and an ATM machine has never baffled me.
*Except: I wouldn’t look at the registry for big bucks and I absolutely cannot set up a two-machine network. And, setting up a database continues to utterly baffle me even though I’ve repeatedly been told databases are simple. So, there is some disconect where I am concerned—I suppose it must be true of other aging folks as well.
I think a lot of the disconect comes from associating with people my age—computer use is typically not a subject for discussion. I’ve overheard teenagers discussing computers in terms I’ve never heard—frustrating to this old goat.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. I’m 32 and I’m getting fed up with the “newest” and “latest” in technology and “gagetry” because it’s getting too cluttered with crap I’ll never need.
I lost my cellphone and had to replace it. They thought I was nuts when I said I do NOT want a full colour screen (they are hard to read in bright sunlight). I do NOT want one with a camera. I do NOT want text messaging. I do NOT want a phone with games. Just gimme a damn phone! One that let’s me punch in number and say “hello.” I don’t want any of the other crap.
Sure I can learn to use all the features for this particular phone, but I don’t want to have to re-learn how to use a friggin’ phone everytime I’m presented with a new one (even six months later!)
I fully believe in the KISS method. Keep It Simple Stupid.
If you design a tool that “does many things” you run the risk that it will do no one thing really well.
I want to do something really basic type a letter – I have to deal with a gazillion functions in Word that I will never need to use (I hate hunting through menu after menu so it doens’t automatically underline and turn blue something with an @ symbol). If something goes wrong (like a co-worker accidently attributed stylesheets to a document and had no idea what he had done or how to get rid of it) you can waste time and get really frustrated.
So yeah, goody extra features! Lots of crap to learn. And just when you get used to it, suddenly they “upgrade” something. Oh, goody the menu is completey different, nothing is where it used to be. Time to re-learn it all.
I also seriously resent being held hostage and/or extorted by technology. I can’t get any support for any of the software I purchased only two years ago. I keep getting told, well you have to upgrade to solve your problem – I’m looking at replacing $5000 worth of software and that I should cough up another $3000 or so for a new computer. Sorry the ROI of that deal just sucks!
Compare that to the typewriter from the 1950s that my family had and used for over 30 years because it did all that we needed it to do. I’m lucky if my laptop isn’t obsolete (or broken) after 3 years.
My former FIL is 76 and knows how to use every feature of the DVD player I got him. He is the fastest gun in the west when it comes to his many, many remotes. Me, all I need is On, Off, Channel Up, Channel Down, and Volume.
And don’t get me started on all the icons. I know, I know, with technology being so global, it’s easier to use symbols that are not dependent on language, but sometimes it gets ridiculous.
The photocopier at work has the following buttons:
A circle - the left half is black, right half is white. The next circle - the left is white, the right is black. One means “more contrast” the other means “less contrast”. So, which means which?
I wonder how many of those people who seem out of touch with technology at 65 were pretty much the same when they were younger. My mother is 62. She can use a computer for a few tasks- emailing and word-processing- as long as some one else has turned on the computer and opened the right program for her. She is terrified that if she does something wrong she will "break it ". It has nothing to do with her age, however. About 20 years ago, she called me at work to find out how to use the VCR to record a TV show that was starting soon . I told her to press play and record. It didn’t work. I didn’t specify that she had to press the buttons at the same time. I didn’t tell her that, because I assumed she would know that- after all, audio cassette recorders worked the same way. Too bad she also didn’t know how to use a cassette recorder. Now, I don’t know when the switch from 8 track to cassette happened, but it had to have been by the early '70s , because I don’t remember a time without them. She would have been in her early thirties then.
Now that wouldn’t apply to the person described in the OP, but about the ATM cards, I think it is at least partially because it involves money. I’ve noticed that even people who aren’t afraid of new technology in general sometimes are afraid of online banking, or using credit cards online
I have forgotten what it is like to live in a time when anything advances at a “glacial pace.” As you get older, time compresses and technologies seem to come faster and faster. At the same time, you are sometimes losing your ability to concentrate as well. If your verbal skills are dominate and your math, mechanical and electronic skills are not your strong suit naturally, you can easily feel overwhelmed.
Besides, I’ve been afraid of technology ever since I met my husband on a Commodore 64 nineteen years ago.
I use my cell phone only to make calls out in case of emergency when I’m shopping or on the road. I accidently left it on two days ago and was thrilled to be awakened by the “Theme from The Pink Panther.” It was a wrong number, of course. And the gentleman was very apologetic for waking me up so early in the morning. He had no idea how excited I was that someone had called me and that I figured out how to answer the phone.
Funny that the OP uses ATM machines and cell phones as examples. It isn’t that I can’t use them, but that those are two things that I’ve decided I’m not going to use (at least not yet). I not only don’t need them but they would require that I change my way of living. I’ve never like talking on the phone and having money available at odd hours of the day and night seems dangerous to me (that is dangerous to my financial well-being).
Here is what a review of [Future Shock](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-
/0553277375/103-8284402-0653439?v=glance) by Alvin Toffler says:
That book came out in 1970 and of course everything that he predicted did not come true, although he wasn’t that wrong either. Another review says that the best part of the book was the part that the above covers. So maybe it isn’t only us old folks that are having trouble with so many changes. 
[sup]Remember we’ve seen lots more than you have.[/sup]
This is odd. Because I work for the government, I get paid on the same day as social security recipients get their money. So I walk into the lobby of the bank where the ATMS are before 10am, and there is a queue of grey heads waiting patiently at the closed inner doors to the bank inside. The bank opens at 10, and the queue often starts forming a bit before 9. I excuse myself politely, walk through them and get my money. I’m in and out in thirty seconds, and they are waiting an hour to go and talk to a human being.
I would understand this except…
… when they do get their money, they go straight next door to the local club and hit the slot machines. These are no one-armed bandits either. They are ultra-modern units with dozens of different prize paths, features, animated sequences… Elderly people who can’t work out an ATM will be saying, “Oh, if I play fifteen coins on six lines, and I can get the free games feature to drop an extra scattered symbol while “Lucky Dollarz” is activated , then I can hit double up and when I get my payout all those credits will go to my membership card which I’ve inserted in the machine, then I can swipe that at the lucky draw machine near the door…” All of this is computerised and a much more complex interface than an ATM. In addition, every machine is different. The club has dozens or possibly hundreds of different types, and the old dears seem to know them all.
I don’t know how how to tape anything on my VCR. Never saw the point of it. Every TV show/movie that has been taped ( by a pure fluke) I have never watched. EVER. That was back in 1986 when we got the first VCR.
I can barely function around the answering machine message after the initial programming.
My cellphone, which I’ve had 4 years, and I are on a tenuous relationship at best.
In the 16 years of dealing with the TV at my inlaws house, I have never once successfully turned on their TV/VCR/DVD/Cable combination. (OK, I did do it once and ended up getting the porn stations and my kids were right there) :eek:
Every digital clock in our house is still on Spring Forward Time. Including my truck, which is not in the house.
I am a whopping 37.
I am very comfortable with my technological incompetance. 
Preach the word, brother {or is it sister?}! Hallelujah! There is one God, and Ned Ludd was his prophet!
You have sort of hit the nail on the head here, I think. It’s all a question of motivation. The people standing on line to deposit their Social Security checks would rather stand on line. It’s a social occasion. They see some friends, say hello to the teller they’ve been seeing every month for years now, catch up on gossip, and generally spend a pleasant hour at the bank. They’re retired, so there’s no need for them to be in and out of the bank in minutes. What’s their hurry? For them, using the ATM would decrease the quality of their banking experience. Why bother?
The slot machines, on the other hand, are entertainment. There’s excitement and risk (and again, the social aspect of gambling, if they’re going with friends), so of course they’re going to learn to use the machines. Because they *want *to.
I think there may be a factor not yet introduced in this thread, a mental “aptitude,” if you will, that makes learning curves easier to climb for some people but impossible for others. I also think that advancing age tends to accentuate the facilities you have developed and de-accentuate the ones that have atrophied.
You may have an aptitude for some things and not for others. It’s not a direct function of intelligence.
I live in a neighborhood of mostly retired and well-off people. I estimate that less than 50% have personal computers, and I have been called to assist in computer problems with most of them at one time – usually virus & adware problems. I have noticed that a typical neighbor is able to learn just enough to get by on the computer - email text to grandkids. But it does not seem natural to them to explore what the computer can do – attaching a snapshot to an email is something they never think of or investigate how.
Also, as technology becomes more complex, the instructions and help functions lag behind, just the opposite of what they should be. This, coupled with a non-desire to find out how things work, and a non-track record of finding out how things worked in the past, erects a barrier to progress.
Some examples and stories. One neighbor had a computer for over a year, and had learned to use a word processor enough to write poems. She would print the poem out and mail it to the local newspaper, which regularly published them. (It never occurred to her that they could be emailed.) One day she called me and said I needed to fix her computer, as nothing she ever wrote got saved! I watched her write a document, print it out, then close Word. When the message said, “Do you want to save this file?” she clicked on “no,” so of course nothing ever got saved.
Now she is not senile, but that seemed like a logical action to her at the time.
I have another friend, 82, who is very active in politics and goes to many government meetings, taking copious notes in shorthand. She files all her documents, can retrieve them at will, and can tell you what happened in any meeting ever held. But I have to walk her thru attaching a file to an email every time as if it were the first time. And the concept that almost every program uses the function sequence “file->save” doesn’t seem to occur to her. Introduce her to a new program and she will eventually ask, “How can I save a file?”
Another neighbor, in her 80’s, is an astute businesswoman, running art galleries, rental properties, and charity thrift shops. Her house is always spotless and she is very organized. But when her printer runs out of ink, she calls me to change the cartridge, and even pays me for the trip and service. I also change the batteries in her phone & mouse, although I think she has learned to replace a light bulb.
We’re back to motivation. Your neighbor, an obvioiusly intelligent woman, simply doesn’t want to be bothered with this stuff. She’s decided that it’s a more efficient use of her time and energy to pay you to change her ink cartridges, or batteries, or whatever.
I do IT training (among other things) for a large law firm. A few years back, we switch from WordPerfect to MS Word. We provided five full days of training for all users. It was mandatory for the secretaries and word processors, and optional for the lawyers, who had the option of much shorter sessions.
A significant percentage of the secretaries simply could not learn to use Word. Keep in mind that all of our secretaries had been using word processing software for years, and were familiar with the basic concepts of word processing and computer use in general.
However, all of our word processors mastered the new program very quickly. Many of them were already familiar with it, just because they were curious and knew the change was coming. They also knew that they were expected to be much more advanced users than the secretaries. There were no problems whatsoever with the word processors.
After discussing this sitation with my fellow trainers, we came to the realization that those secretaries who could not learn were not stupid, but rather unmotivated. They perceived that not learning the new software would allow them to transfer a percentage of their workload to the word processing staff. They saw learning a new program as “extra” work. In the absence of any penalties for not learning, they simply saw no reason to do so. They correctly saw that they could manipulate the lawyers for whom they worked (who are not particularly technologically aware) into believing that the new software was “too complicated” and “too hard.” In some cases, they even got their lawyers to demand of the IT staff that their secretaries’ workstations not be converted to Word.
Our solution to this was to make the lawyers aware that it wasn’t possible to leave some workstations out of the conversion, and that the new program wasn’t any more difficult than WordPerfect, and that in fact it would make many tasks easier, and finally, to pick the most obnoxiously resistant secretary, one who had announced publicly that she’d never use the new software, and fire her.
After that, no problems. All learning difficulties with the new program disappeared overnight.
It all comes down to motivation.
I only skimmed most of the thread, but allow me to hijack briefly. What you’re talking about isn’t limited to the elderly. Back around 10-15 years ago when I was a kid, I used to be a whiz at figuring out computers and technology. I would mess with system files in DOS, hard drive partitions, the Windows registry, etc. with complete confidence that I knew what I was doing. And I never had any problems.
Fast-forward to 2004, and I’m now 25. I’m afraid to make changes in the Windows Control Panel for fear of causing my system to seize up and crash. Windows XP is a whole new type of technology which, to be honest, both confuses and scares me.
Oh, I’ve also never owned a cell phone, and those confuse me as well. I’ll ask my friend if I can get someone’s phone number from him and he’ll say, “Sure. Just grab it out of my phone.” I’ll say, “Um…how?” to at which point he becomes slightly annoyed and shows me, like I was trying to shove a square block through a round hole. Has happened with many friends. 
Point is, you don’t need to be older to find technology daunting. Technology does not move at glacial speeds. If you don’t keep up, you’ll find yourself stranded.
Adam
This is quite true. As I mentioned I don’t want to have to re-learn something as basic as using a phone. But I can if I need to. But if you’re going to fill up a Very Basic Thing with so many bells and whistles that I have to work really hard to do the Very Basic Thing, then I’m going to have no interest in learning. Especially if I’m going to have to re-learn it in six months. No wanna!
I do PR and graphics design. I’m using seven different softare applications at any given time because I’ll be updating a website, preparing a graphics document for pre-press, and running a mail merge. You can plop me down in front of any graphics program and I can figure out how they work, and probably become fairly proficient, in a single afternoon, because they all have the same common-sense features. Like all word processors will have a bold or underline funciton, it would be stupid if they didn’t, so it’s just a matter of learning how to find it in the interface, right?
But with too many extra features the interface goes to shit.
Imagine how ridiculous it would be if Photoshop suddenly incorporated an MP3 player. So under the same menu for Contrast and Color Balance, I had controls for Pitch and Volume. Dammit, quit cluttering up my imaging program!
What if you wanted to flush your toilet, but first you had to look a bunch of levers for Urinalysis, Remote Wash Basin On, Temperature, Play Music, Volume?
How to flush, is something I need to know, the rest is not. It just adds unnecessary complexity. The unnecessary stuff make you go :rolleyes: and not want to be bothered if there is an old-fashioned, standardized alternative.
And stuff DOES change from month to month, or week to week.
You can learn all the ATM menues…
Oh, but they upgraded the interface to make it easier, so it’s a completely different layout than the last time you looked at it. Oh, they added some advertising to the screen last week. Oh, they just added menu choices for mortagages and loans (that you don’t have anyway) to the list of options. Oh, this particular branch of your bank has a newer/older machine that has a completely different layout on the screen than your usual bank. No, no, you have to swipe your card at this new machine, whereas last week you had to insert it.
Or you can just fill out he same slip you’ve been filling out for 50 years and hand it to the teller.
If I was 70, I probably couldn’t be bothered to re-learn the ATM every six months either.
I have a friend who is older than me. . .by a whole seven months. He is a complete and utter luddite. He doesn’t buy CDs–just tapes and LPs. He has a VCR, but no DVD player. He doesn’t own a computer, and just barely knows how to use one. He’s hostile to the idea of new technology, and, honestly, I don’t think he knows how to use most of those things. He just turned 22. Granted, he has pretty severe agoraphobia, so some of these decisions might be related to that, but it’s still rather odd.
That being said, I think that familiarity with current technology does correspond with age. I’m the youngest person in our department by about seven or eight years, and I sometimes amaze the older members of our time with my ability to use a computer rapidly while insisting that, no, I’m not a “computer person.”
I think that those of us who grew up using computers have different wiring in our brains. I can intuitively grasp pretty much any program you throw at me, and navigate my computer like it’s a second home. My parents, who are as smart o smarter than I cam, do not.
I can easily imagine that an elderly individual–who likely would need to learn from scratch any sort of computer skills–might be inclined to just say “fuck it.” It’s like learning to play a musical instrument as an adult when you’ve only ever listened to music before. The benefit sometimes isn’t worth it.
Part of that would be familiarity with the layout. Anyone who is, say under 30, has practically grown up with personal computers (certinaly anyone under 20 has pretty much had the internet for a good chunk of their lives).
So the general layout of navigation along the top and down the left side with content in the “big frame” is easily recognizable. It’s not quite the same as all reading being left to right. My parents are from an era where you check the table of contents, or the index, to find that the information you want is on page 54.
The internet has really changed the way we read and look at basic layout. It’s no longer only left to right, top to bottom. Screens are usually split into the three components. And sometimes additional menu options are on the right as well. We’ll intuitively go to the very top of the screen to look at options that appear in pull down menus, whereas my mom will rely on toolbars (if the toolbar isn’t set to be viewed she may get confused.) We may expect some things to be invisible, like pulldown menu items, until we mouseover them.
Thanks to video games and other primaily graphic interfaces, younger folks also intuitively recognize unlabelled links to other menu options, and graphic interface controls. My mom is at ease with a VCR – pop in tape, hit the play button on the VCR or remote. But the graphic interface of a DVD player, where the DVD puts a graphic on the TV screen would be more confusing to her. Particularly since each DVD’s interface may be different, and Og knows what they are using: text, icons, or what have you. Is the “boink” noise a happy you-found-a-link sound, or does the “boink” mean you made a mistake?
Younger generations are more accustomed to the Where’s Waldo way of navigating. You’ll see an onscreen icon of a speaker and think “ah, that must be the volume control,” whereas my mom is more likely to look for a physical button on the machine that is labelled “volume” because she might not think that the speakers, external devices, might still be governed by the graphic interface of a particular software program.
(Think, if you have iTunes and Real Player they each have volume controls, but so does the control panel of your computer, AND if you have extarnal speakers they may have a physical volume control knob too or may have volume control through some graphic interface of their drivers.)
Symbols like > and >> and >>| will be obvious to younger generations, but may not mean much to someone who has had 60 years of “Play”, and “FWD”.
There’s a lot more visual clutter to sort through these days.
That’s totally true for me too - at 16 I knew a whole lot more about computers than I do now. I knew what was coming out, I knew how to screw around with the thing, I was savvy! Now I don’t really know a damned thing except the things I need to know to do what I like to do - got a Mac and cheerfully don’t know a thing about how it works.
I’ve noticed that cel phones, although some people don’t like them in principle, are some of the most easily adopted technologies - my dad manages to use his, and he cannot be taught how to save a file to a disk. My grandmother had one for a while, she turns 90 next year. I think that’s because while cel phones don’t work like a landline phone, they act like them. There’s totally a frame of reference for people who have been using phones, particularly cordless phones. Dad dosen’t work the phone book functions and all, but he can call people like a mad demon. I think that’s why they’ve become ubiquitous technology - not only are they useful, there’s a real frame of reference to them for everybody.