A few months back, on a weekday, Dad and I were waiting in a large office building, to attend an errand. To fight the boredom, I pulled out my then brand new IPOD, plugged the BOSE in-ear into his ears and made him listen to Ganesha Pancharatnam. He was all but smiles. Then came the obvious question - “How is this possible?”
I was just about to start with the regular jargon to explain the technology, when I had to stop. “Arrr…this wouldn’t be worth the effort” I thought, and it flashily occurred to me, to cook up something.
Nevertheless, my heart didn’t give heed, and I decided to give it a try. I went by the basics, like cassette tapes, “1s and 0s”, types of storage etc, until it looked a bit convincing. To be honest, seeing his face, didn’t look like he had clue.
This is one of many occasions, where the digital world has come face to face with my folks, leaving them clueless. Be it the personal computer, or sending a text from a mobile phone, they always decided to stay away from it.
My brother did take up computer lessons for my mom, until she started bunking it. After ages, she now knows to use a cell phone sans the messaging part. Dad’s not too far. He had computer basics training at work. He had happily flaunted his email-id before me, until he forgot the creds, and then, eventually lost interest.
I guess we have similar cases with people in their generation, and older than them. If we try to find the root cause of this ignorance (rude, but the apt term), feel it has do with both us (the genx) and our folks.
Us: The good enough reason is not being a little patient in trying to explain things to them. Not that they are techni-deficient. They are just not aware. (I must confess, that I haven’t done any good either)
Them: Merely a lack of interest.
Most of the time, our elders learn to use the PC or mobile, out of sheer necessity. Son/daughter abroad, regular calls not possible, Skype looks inevitable. With time they do get the hang of it.
Special cases do exist, when they have great interest in learning new things. Like a grand mom of mine, who had ordered me to teach her messaging, on the mobile. Or his thatha, who would use Outlook with great ease!
My final take on this: The gap is prevalent throughout, but will narrow down, if the techi-brilliant youth and the oldies do their respective bit.
3 comments:
How true! I can relate this to the situation at home now...Mom was very interested in learning to use computer so that she can chat with me on Gtalk! and need not depend on my sis or dad to help her...But my Sis never had the patience to teach her!!! Poor Mommy...I guess she will learn only when I come back to India :) as Sis has left Bangalore now :(
dats the case with most of the moms nowadays.....sob sob for them
We should go into their shoes and make them understand otherwise its just not possible to generate interest for them...
the other day me and my bro tried out explaining my dad about how computer works on "0" and "1" ...it took a while but then it started making sense to him...we should be little patient...:)
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