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Bob Holmes
Yesterday I was invited to take part in an interview on Radio 5 with Valerie Singleton as part of the launch of the SimplicITy computer. Following this, I was able to try out the machine.
I think it’s a very interesting and worthwhile idea and I hope that it takes off. I was going to do a balanced and calm blog about it – and then someone sent me a link to an item in PCPro magazine. And I was incensed!
Not so much by the article, which you can see here, as by the comments.
Typically for the response to this sort of thing, they immediately come out with the line “I’m over 50 and I know all about computers, because I worked with Unix for years…”. And – inevitably – “the term Silver Surfers is patronising to us older computer experts.”
Yeah – I’m nearly 60, and the first time I used what was to become the Internet was in 1974, having previously used a KDF9 at university (you have to be a real geek to appreciate that.) I also have friends in their 80’s who are computer enthusiasts. I was with one earlier in the week and he was showing me a video that he had produced of the effects of polarized light passing through growing crystals. Very beautiful.
So I, and everyone else involved with Digital Unite, know full well that there are many people in their 70’s, 80’s and 90’s who are more than capable of using digital technology.
But we also meet many people for whom the world of computers and the web is hostile, perhaps frightening, and certainly too much trouble to find out about. And we know from those who we do help, that once they take the plunge, that there is invariably something that makes their life better, whether it is to become an enthusiast themselves and get into digital photography or family history or social networking, or “only” to use the computer to keep in touch with their families, or play solitaire, or one of dozens of other simple pleasures.
Silver Surfers’ Day is there to help those people. It does not patronise them, it’s just a catchy title that is shorthand for a group of people.
The SimplicITy computer will not be right for everyone, but if it helps a small proportion of the 10 million people in the UK who do not use the Internet to find out what it can do for them, then it will have done a worthwhile job.
But, like MPs and their expenses, there will always be those who “just don’t get it”.
November 12th, 2009 bobholmes |
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