I have loud and furious discussions with friends my age who are still having problems entering the late 20th century world of computing. I tell them, when they have mastered a difficult problem, to write down what they did for future reference in a notebook by the computer (and don't call me again). Age is not a barrier to learning new technology, rather it's that some of my friends are smart and talented to the point that they've never learned how to learn--everything came easy, until now that is. I'm sending them this article from the Seattle Times for inspiration:
"Call Helen Burcham Green one wired lady.
The Bothell resident exchanges e-mail with relatives around the world. She writes books on her Mac computer and she advises people not to trust everything they find on the Internet.
"It's too easy to do the research, and you can't depend upon it," she said. "People want to take shortcuts today."
Of the world's computer literati, Green could be the oldest.
She turned 103 Wednesday.
She entered the computer world a decade ago after writing her first book, an extensive family genealogy that traces ancestors back to the 1400s. Her grandson Jamie Green, a computer-science graduate, and her daughter-in-law Betty Green convinced her that editing would be simpler if she took advantage of today's technology.
So she's writing her current book — her life story — on a computer.
Green found the switch from typewriter to computer relatively easy. She keeps notes on how to do things until she masters the technique."
1 comment:
Wish I could get Helen to talk to my mother. She still doesn't have a DVD player. She master the video cassette player back in the 1980s, but isn't ready to tackle a new technology.
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