Tech support for your parents (so you don't have to)
December 13, 2010 5:40 PM   Subscribe

Google presents: TeachParentsTech.org (via the official Google blog). You'll never have to teach your parents how to copy and paste, attach a file to their email or transfer files again.
posted by peacheater (68 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
          ME
"OK Mom, open your browser."

          MOM
"My what?"

          (end scene)
posted by mexican at 5:44 PM on December 13, 2010 [17 favorites]


Whoa whoa whoa my parents aren't on some crappy Mac! They're on a real Windows computer with buttons helpfully hidden in every separate program you use!

Also I call shenanigans on that copy/paste video, because he's on the New York Times website and you can't highlight anything there without getting "helpful" popup nonsense.
posted by graventy at 5:45 PM on December 13, 2010


yeah right, my dad would be like "I can't get these damn videos to play!!"
posted by orme at 5:45 PM on December 13, 2010


Last night I had to explain to my parents why changing a filename from something.pages to something.doc doesn't turn it into a Word document, but I can't for the life of me think of why people still need to even think about that sort of thing, or even why that information is exposed to them at all. There used to be a clear divide between Macs (which hid that bullshit from users) and Dos/Windows machines (which always did, and now kinda-sorta do and kinda-sorta don't) but the Windows people have never quite managed to shed some of the worst, most unusable legacy bullshit from the dark days of DOS and somehow Macs got infected with it over time as well.

Which is all to say, what a mess. The fact that parents need this and that these kinds of errors get made at all, much less over and over again, is really saddening.
posted by mhoye at 5:49 PM on December 13, 2010


Where's the "any" key?
posted by lukemeister at 5:49 PM on December 13, 2010 [5 favorites]


All I can think when I look at any of those is, "Can of worms. CAN OF WORMS."
posted by katillathehun at 5:52 PM on December 13, 2010 [4 favorites]


What about "remove a cavalcade of malware from their system, fix their boot sector and try to recover the Facebook and Gmail accounts, and then give up and buy a new crappy eMachine at Best Buy?"
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:52 PM on December 13, 2010 [10 favorites]


Making file extensions visible in Finder is an optional feature in OS X, mhoye. Which is to say, why didn't you set up your parents' computer better? Because you don't love them enough?

(first part not kidding, second part kidding)
posted by telegraph at 5:53 PM on December 13, 2010


All this computer hacking is making me thirsty! I think I'll order a Tab.
posted by ORthey at 5:57 PM on December 13, 2010 [4 favorites]


Last Thanksgiving, my mother sheepishly came to me with a CD -- a friend had given her a series of photos on it, but she didn't know how to look at the photos, and wanted me to show her.

It took TEN MINUTES to explain how. But that's only because my explanation went like this:

"Okay. So to start, you put the disc in the computer, and -- oh. Okay, THIS thing here is the disc, and you put it in this drive and -- oh. Okay, this thing here is called a 'drive,' and you open this up by pushing THIS button -- no, you just push it once. And then it pops out and you put it in and -- no, the other way. The shiny side down. There you go. Okay, then you just close it by pushing this same button - no, the same button you used to open it. And then you -- oh. Okay, I'll wait while you get some paper and a pen."

My father also has said he wants to get a new computer because theirs is "slowing down," but they rarely run virus scans or defragment their drives or anything, so I made him promise to let me try to run Ad-Aware and the like on it first and see if that fixed things any. He also at the time asked how to transfer files from the old computer to the new. "Well, yeah, there are programs where you --"

"nah, I don't want a lot of stuff, just my email address book," he said. "Can I just print that out and retype it?"

"You....could, but you can also just save the address book to a disk and move it to the new computer that way."

"But how do I move just the address book?"

"You...tell it that's all you want?"

"But how do you know," my father asked, "that the guy who wrote the program isn't sneaking other stuff in there?"

So my father managed to combine Luddism with Cold War paranoia.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:12 PM on December 13, 2010 [25 favorites]


neat site in theory, but i think it already supposes a basic knowledge of computer and internet technology. a lot of parents, like my dad, need to start from scratch. i fondly remember the time my dad called me asking why all his e-mails were getting cut off. we troubleshooted a little over the phone (does not work, ever). i drove over, we turned on his computer. opened up the browser, scroll around and check out his e-mail. everything seems to check out fine.
"wait what is that, what are you doing there? how did you do that?"
"huh? what do you mean?"
"the page is going up and down"
"you mean this? the scrollbar?"
"whatever that is, how did you do that?"

every moleholl is a mountain when explaining computers to your parents.
posted by raztaj at 6:19 PM on December 13, 2010 [11 favorites]


F on the copy & paste video. The dude says to hold down the mouse button while dragging over the text one wants to copy, but he never says to release the mouse button. He just jumps straight to "Then go to Edit > Copy, then open your e-mail". When I say that to my Mom she says "Honey, I don't know what you mean when you just say 'Open your e-mail'".
posted by Lukenlogs at 6:22 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


Making file extensions visible in Finder is an optional feature in OS X, mhoye.

Show _all_ filename extensions is an optional feature (Finder -> Preferences ->advanced). You can choose not to, and it will still show you some of them anyway. Not coincidentally, that's the kind of bullshit I'm talking about. Worse for veteran Mac users, changing filenames can now break file associations. That never used to be true! But now it's extremely true.
posted by mhoye at 6:26 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


Where's the one that explains to my Mom that if she knows what website she wants to go to she doesn't have to type the whole URL into Yahoo's search bar, click "search", and then click on the result because the Internet doesn't mean Yahoo and aaaaarrggghhhhhhh....
posted by schoolgirl report at 6:30 PM on December 13, 2010 [13 favorites]


Am I the only person with a totally tech savvy parent?
posted by vespabelle at 6:37 PM on December 13, 2010


The copy / paste video reminded me how long it's been since I actually went to the menu to select Edit -> Copy instead of just hitting Ctrl+C. Additionally, is anyone else humored that the video uses Firefox and not Chrome?
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 6:43 PM on December 13, 2010


Am I the only person with a totally tech savvy parent?

No my dad is completely tech-savvy and can usually handle all my mom's tech problems as well (thankfully).
posted by peacheater at 6:44 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


My dad got a trash-80 in like 1979 and programmed all his engineering routines in Basic and saved them to his cassette tape. Of course, the progress slowed a great deal after that.

My mom is great at Bejeweled Blitz and email forwarding.

People learn what they want.
posted by sfts2 at 6:47 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


I really like the whatbrowser.org website that Google set up as well. I get the feeling that the most important goal of the parents-tech-support website is to raise awareness of browsers and get people to update their browsers--to anything that is newer than IE6! Google used Firefox in the video because they really don't care what browser you use so long as it is new and fast and sleek and makes you use the internet more and makes you use Google more. That was the whole point of Chrome: basically force Microsoft to kick into gear with their browser so that the internet can be a better, faster, easier place, where more and more people use Google's products.
posted by brenton at 6:54 PM on December 13, 2010


Am I the only person with a totally tech savvy parent?

My mom & dad are 69 and 70 and they can do everything...

It could always be worse. It could be your boss. Those situations are awwwwwkward.
posted by swooz at 7:02 PM on December 13, 2010 [5 favorites]


Yeah, I'm never again allowed to do any 'tech support' for mom. She's got her 12 year-old slow-as-hell funny-cursored Gateway desktop teetering on the brink of total destruction but it works for what she wants it to do (Literati and now, to a lesser extent, FB) and if I do anything that alters the cluttered landscape of her hard disk I don't hear the end of it till next holiday season.
posted by carsonb at 7:03 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


My parents do...OK, as long as it's within a very small set of usual activities.

Puzzlingly, they would never think to go to the internet to, say, find out more about a medical condition or look for information about something they own or want to own. Those cheesy Jacquelin whoever cards, though? Experts.

ShowMyPC is the only thing keeping me even a little bit sane, and even that is frustrating with the lag.
posted by maxwelton at 7:03 PM on December 13, 2010


PC assemblers like HP and Dell aren't doing anyone any favorites by bundling endless shit programs with their off-the-shelf PCs, either. My parents bought a new computer which defaulted to an IE with THREE toolbars loaded from the factory.
posted by maxwelton at 7:06 PM on December 13, 2010 [3 favorites]


Am I the only person with a totally tech savvy parent?

No. Years ago my dad convinced his employer to buy a state-of-the-art Apple ][+ to help him with the accounting. IIRC, he wrote his own software back then for the family finances. And to calculate gambling outcomes for football. His home office has more working computers in it right now than I have owned in my lifetime.
posted by K.P. at 7:22 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


This definitely applies to my parents , but also to the KIDS (teenagers & young adults) of my contemporaries to a certain extent, few of whom know how antivirus , firewalls, routers etc work
posted by canoehead at 7:25 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


Now Google just needs to make an auto-response script using this template for people using GMail. I could create a filter based on certain user groups where if the keyword "how+bookmark" is the e-mail, the Bookmark tutorial automatically responds. Or if there's (no subject), there's a special response. That would probably eliminate 90% of my workload.
posted by jmd82 at 7:28 PM on December 13, 2010


Obligatory xkcd strip, 123 go!:

Congratulations, you're now the local computer expert!
posted by fantodstic at 7:30 PM on December 13, 2010 [3 favorites]


My dad asked me this week if "a laptop would have a hole big enough in it to put a CD." He was shocked when I said yes.

He and my mom have been saving photos and documents (only) on crappy, easily-lost flashdrives so as not to "waste space" on their 320 GB PC.
posted by tristeza at 7:39 PM on December 13, 2010 [6 favorites]


Dot org. What's that? Why didn't they put it on a web site? Won't someone please think of the parents.
posted by Babblesort at 8:13 PM on December 13, 2010


Visiting my family them means spending four hours fixing a computer riddled with viruses and porn. Between my 60 year old father and my 20 year old brother there is enough porn on there to create half the internet should it ever go missing.

And for the entire four hours I know that I am sitting in a chair that my dad and kid brother sit on and jerk off.
posted by munchingzombie at 8:16 PM on December 13, 2010 [7 favorites]


When my parents see a button - keyboard, mouse, drive eject, on/off, anything - they assume it has a 5 lbs detent and just POKE it. POKE! POKE! STAB! This habit makes mouse work impossible and has pretty much rendered any electronic purchase made in the last 15 years useless. I wonder what they'd to to an IPod Touch?
posted by klarck at 8:33 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


Agreed that this site isn't basic enough. Specifically I think it needs visuals. Saying "Hold the control key — or command key on a Mac — and press the plus key" requires a lot more thinking than a basics site should.*

My folks are fine at this stuff (mostly), but the only thing that has gotten my grandparents anywhere is written out instructions with big visuals. Hold the button that looks like THIS and press the button that looks like THIS.

Combine those sorts of visuals with nice short videos and you may actually get somewhere. Until then I agree that this isn't much help

* It also assumes a comfortable knowledge with the Mac/Windows divide. The site should start with two big buttons, Mac and Windows, and then only serve you the information you need for your platform.
posted by wemayfreeze at 8:49 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


EmpressCallipygos: ""But how do you know," my father asked, "that the guy who wrote the program isn't sneaking other stuff in there?"

So my father managed to combine Luddism with Cold War paranoia.
"

Well, you install Ubuntu and forget to mention the Thompson backdoor possibility.
posted by pwnguin at 9:25 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


Well, you install Ubuntu and forget to mention the Thompson backdoor possibility.

My father would squawk because I "did something" to the computer and it looks different.

Seriously, when it comes to computers they have the kind of technological level that someone I used to know once described as "Big sun in sky, many buffalo come."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:35 PM on December 13, 2010 [10 favorites]


I'm really proud of my mom. Mid-sixties, participates regularly in a cat forum, can send photos she takes with her digital camera, and listens to This American Life via podcast (though I had to step that up for her). Sometimes I still have to explain a few very basic things but, overall, she's got the hang of it. I hope I'm at least as mildly comfortable with new technology when I'm her age.
posted by treepour at 9:44 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


Am I the only person with a totally tech savvy parent?

I think I might be the oldest person here whose parent taught me copy and paste.
posted by bwanabetty at 9:52 PM on December 13, 2010


Mr. F's mom is on Twitter, has an iPhone, FaceTimes with us when I'm least expecting it. She's 72.

My mother's 66. She fears DSL because then the Internet will always be in the house even when the computer's off.

Go fig. There's a really weird tech dropoff. (Both fathers kind of ignore the entire thing, although Mr. F's dad just got an iPhone and is all about the hunting apps.)
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 10:14 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


My dad is playing the windows "freecell" solitaire game. In order. He opens it, opens the dialog asking which game you want to play, and enters the next number in line.

He's up to 6,300 or something ridiculous. He's 82, I don't think he'll exhaust the games available, but it's a goal.
posted by maxwelton at 10:27 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


As one of the formerly inept parents out there Thank you son for all the years of tech support!
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 11:00 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


I just have this to say, about all of our smug little feelings of superiority: my father could program computers that didn't even have screens; they just printed results on paper rolls. He wrote code for mainframe computers for most of his career, and was damn good at it. He retired after helping his company deal with Y2K issues on the mainframe they were still running -- his code didn't have any issues, but other people's code did. He taught me to program BASIC when I was ten years old, and introduced me to my first Macintosh in 1984.

This same intelligent guy could not make heads nor tails of Windows, never could. Every story told above about how hard it was for their parent(s) to understand, could apply equally to my father. It was so painful to help him with his computer I couldn't stand it sometimes.

The point, if I have one, is this: you'd better be damn good at adapting when you're older, if the computing paradigm shifts as fundamentally as it did during his lifetime, or your kids are going to be mocking you the same way, and you're going to be just as much as a pain in the ass to them.

heed my cautionary tale
posted by davejay at 11:00 PM on December 13, 2010 [8 favorites]


The solution to parental tech problems is simple: move to an OS they aren't using. If they've stuck themselves with Windows, go to Mac. If they chose Mac, go Linux. If they somehow end up with Ubuntu, go find an Amiga.

You can then legitimately claim to not know how to mess with their OS. If they insist, fuck it up royally once, and then use that as a reason to not touch their machine.

Alternatively, confiscate their computer and replace it with an iPad.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:28 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


My mom scared me recently by asking "Can you explan iPods to me?"
posted by nomadicink at 2:28 AM on December 14, 2010


My dad is playing the windows "freecell" solitaire game. In order. He opens it, opens the dialog asking which game you want to play, and enters the next number in line.

He's up to 6,300 or something ridiculous. He's 82, I don't think he'll exhaust the games available, but it's a goal.


I smell a book deal!

allthefreecellgamesinorder.blogspot.com
posted by maqsarian at 2:41 AM on December 14, 2010 [3 favorites]


Alternatively, confiscate their computer and replace it with an iPad.

Joking aside, this is so close to being a working solution already. Lots of small things are still a hassle, but this is the closest to a parent-proof solution the world has ever had.
posted by lifeless at 3:45 AM on December 14, 2010


I smell a book deal! allthefreecellgamesinorder.blogspot.com

SHIT MY DAD PLAYS.

Chip's Challenge can be the flashback part of the show, I think he finished that.
posted by maxwelton at 4:09 AM on December 14, 2010 [2 favorites]


When my son was born in 1993, I made sure he had an email account.
posted by Obscure Reference at 4:25 AM on December 14, 2010


A luddite-style link to the sweetest spoof of all time about techno incompetence - the medieval helpdesk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&hl=uk&v=pQHX-SjgQvQ
posted by Jody Tresidder at 5:01 AM on December 14, 2010 [4 favorites]


I don't know if even the IPad suggestion will work. I have uncle that is 70(industrial engineer) and his wife(radiation oncology) in her 60's. They have had 4 different people show them how to use it, including me. I tried to show them the user manual and the online video tutorials, but they have trouble turning it on and off.
I think part of it is putting in the time to learn things. I have dealt with people as young as 25 who have extreme difficulty using a computer. I'm willing to help them get over whatever particular obstacle they are having, but I need them to put it some to figure it out like the aforementioned XKCD strip.
This is why I'm getting out of the IT industry and becoming a doctor.
posted by roguewraith at 5:16 AM on December 14, 2010


Jody Tresidder, that video is pure comedy gold! Cheers!

By the way, instead of pasting the youtube URL, you can also make it a hyperlink by following these easy steps:
1) First of all go to youtube, highlight the URL in the address bar of the browser (the white bar at the top)
2) Use the browser "Edit" menu and select "Copy" (Keyboard shortcut: CTRL-C, on Mac: CMD-C)
3) Now go back to the Metafilter thread.
4) Write the text which you want to turn into a hyperlink (Note: in this case you could have turned the words "medieval helpdesk" into a hyperlink)
5) Highlight the text which you want to turn into a hyperlink (e.g. "Medieval helpdesk")
6) On the bottom right of the comment form, click "link"
7) Use the browser "Edit" menu and select "Paste" (Keyboard shortcut: CTRL-V, on Mac: CMD-V)
8) Click OK.
9) Click "Post Comment".

posted by yoHighness at 5:51 AM on December 14, 2010 [1 favorite]


About ten years ago the US Cultural Centre in Belgrade, Serbia, offered free computer classes to senior citizens. At the time it seemed to me like such a waste of funds. But being able to communicate with my elderly mother by email ever since, with minimal tech support, has been a god-send.

Now I would totally donate money to an organization devoted to promoting computer literacy in the elderly, especially in developing countries. Is there one?
posted by Dragonness at 6:38 AM on December 14, 2010 [1 favorite]


The other day, my boss asked me, "So, can you get the cloud on Windows 7, or do you need the new one?"

How do you answer that? My point is that Google should invest their resources in training the trainers.
posted by sdrawkcab at 6:43 AM on December 14, 2010 [3 favorites]


but they rarely run virus scans or defragment their drives or anything

Not to nitpick, but virus scans should be scheduled to run regularly, and in the background. The benefits of defragging modern filesystems are debatable at best. NTFS is actually particularly good at preventing fragmentation.

Now, backups on the other hand......
posted by schmod at 7:00 AM on December 14, 2010


Am I the only person with a totally tech savvy parent?

My dad is totally tech savvy.

My mom is not terrible at actually using the computer, but not completely on top of it, either. However, she does display an alarming grasp of the proper internet mindset even though she doesn't always get the technology.

"I googled your new boyfriend's name. A lot of results for some guy in a band who has the same name came up, so I ignored all of those. But I did find out that he used to live at [address] and he used to work at [company] and he contributed money to Obama!"

"Oh ... kay."

Proud? Horrified? Both.
posted by little cow make small moo at 7:15 AM on December 14, 2010 [7 favorites]


allthefreecellgamesinorder.blogspot.com

You jest, but….
posted by zamboni at 7:34 AM on December 14, 2010 [1 favorite]


My father mercifully has remained unconnected to computers. I don't envy the tech support role that others describe here (I do it enough in my career and at home with my immediate family, thank you) but I do find it interesting how the pace of technology has changed relationships between generations. Gone are the days of asking the elder person to solve problems if it is remotely technical.

I have a theory that older people aren't actually that dumb (I increasingly think this as I grow older, incidentally) but when you are accosted by imagery and descriptions of being dumb you gradually cede the battle.
posted by dgran at 7:35 AM on December 14, 2010 [1 favorite]


I've found that having a tech illiterate mother has helped the social aspect of troubleshooting immensely. Whenever I go and help folks in the office with some mind-killing issue ("you can't open every type of file in Word. This is a PDF, just open My Documents and double-click it") they often depreciate themselves by saying "you must think I'm stupid".

I honestly tell them no, I don't think they're stupid. "If I thought you were stupid because of this, then I would have to think of my mother as being stupid. And she's the smartest, most wonderful person in the world."
posted by charred husk at 7:49 AM on December 14, 2010 [2 favorites]


I used to have to do the bi-monthly clean out all the malware and toolbars and other bullshit on my dad's computer. One month, he finally screwed the machine up beyond my skills to repair. I gave him an old laptop of mine, made his account a normal user not an administrator, and I haven't heard from him since.
posted by ish__ at 9:04 AM on December 14, 2010


The point, if I have one, is this: you'd better be damn good at adapting when you're older, if the computing paradigm shifts as fundamentally as it did during his lifetime, or your kids are going to be mocking you the same way, and you're going to be just as much as a pain in the ass to them.

Forget the computing paradigm. My fear is that when I'm 70 I'll have to call my kids to set the blinking clock on my hamster.
posted by DU at 9:27 AM on December 14, 2010 [3 favorites]


This site was built by a few folks at Google to help keep tech support a family business.

Assholes.
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 9:51 AM on December 14, 2010 [1 favorite]


I'm getting "error allocating base address BAR for pci device" at bootup so I asked my daughter where to go to learn about pci base address registers. She suggested teachparentstech but I'm drawing a blank so far.
posted by jfuller at 10:30 AM on December 14, 2010 [1 favorite]


My 70 year old father is rocking a two window set-up, switched to chrome and uses gmail as his gateway to his other 3 email addresses.

I set it all up for him, but he's only called once with a question.
posted by Mick at 10:46 AM on December 14, 2010


Things I see among my non-tech savvy friends:

* The computer is always put in an extremely uncomfortable place in the house. Out of the way, at a desk or table where using it is awful, with a crappy chair, etc. Who wants to spend any time there? Less time = more intimidating.

* Computers require a bit of thought to use. Most tech-challenged people I know expect a computer to be magical, like the star trek computer, or a passive entertainment, like TV.

* Computers are expensive and get outdated very quickly. Why should they spend $1000 every three years (the thinking goes) to have less fun than a TV which never gets outdated?

* The learning curve is fairly steep and full of landmines. My mom double-clicks on everything. (I think single/double/right clicks are one of the worst UI decisions ever made, though I have no idea what would be better. Good for technical users, awful for casual users.)

* There is a huge amount of fear about viruses and spying, and probably rightly so. Many folks fear using the web because they're positive they're going to get something which will wreck their computer.

* The early concern about "disk space" and "keeping your computer clean" from the era of expensive storage (which is largely irrelevant today) really hampers some folks' use of the machine. My mom obsessively deletes emails as they come in because she doesn't want to use up space on her 200GB disk drive. She could save every photo she took for the rest of her life and not run out of space.

* Buying what look like fun new accessories is a landmine and frustrating. "Why doesn't my new camera work?"

Etc., etc. It's a rewarding device but it's very difficult to get into, especially if it is approached with a "TV" mindset.
posted by maxwelton at 11:11 AM on December 14, 2010 [2 favorites]


I set it all up for him, but he's only called once with a question.

That question: "what the hell did you do to my computer, goddammit?"
posted by davejay at 11:17 AM on December 14, 2010


I think I might be the oldest person here whose parent taught me copy and paste.

My dad taught me C:>copy /b a:\Tetris.exe c:\games\Tetris.exe
I'm still trying to teach my mom how to launch FireFox.
posted by clarknova at 1:42 PM on December 14, 2010


Where's the "any" key?

Here's one, simply visit once to install then enjoy many happy years of phone based trouble shooting.

The solution to parental tech problems is simple: move to an OS they aren't using.

It doesn't work, especially if they're the ones who funded you for four years through a CS degree...
posted by robertc at 4:10 PM on December 14, 2010


Needs one for copying photos from a camera to a computer. I get that one about six times a year.
posted by Artw at 11:51 PM on December 14, 2010


Am I the only person with a totally tech savvy parent?

My mother is 83 and she refuses to touch a computer - but I think it is a matter of principle to her (she never touched a typewriter, either - wrote her whole masters thesis in long hand in 1982!)

I, on the other hand, am the family tech support ... even my grandchildren call me for help.

I don't think it is an age issue; I have one daughter who studied DOS (god knows why!) and another who hates even sending email (... both learned enough to switch to MAC after they realized that their boyfriends' advice was as bad as I told them it was)
posted by Surfurrus at 6:02 AM on December 15, 2010


My 76 year old grandmom hasn't had a regular schooling, although she learnt to write and read all by herself. Things were different for women back then; she got married when she was 14, for instance, and higher education was only for the males in the family. Didn't deter her one bit; she taught herself how to read and write in Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, Sanskrit and English, although she's a bit hesitant in speaking English.

She has also mastered Windows. I had to hunt down the Telugu language interface pack, of course, but she's totally rockin' it. She has even her own metaphors for "regular" stuff; for instance, she calls Google Talk as "The Traffic Light", because there's a green light when your status is "Available" and red light when the status is "Busy". She reads quite a bit, and often discourses on spirituo-religious matters in a neighbourhood temple; she now writes all those notes in Microsoft Word. I'm trying to get her to blog now; she's posted exactly one post so far, though, so I need to speak to her again and find out what's wrong.

In the process, she's taught me quite a few things about computing as well, mostly in UI terms. For one, the biggest stumbling block is actually metaphors; when we were on the English Language Interface Pack, I had a hard time explaining to her what "Recycle Bin" meant, mostly because we don't call them that in India. It's easier in Telugu because the Telugu translation is simply "Trash". Likewise, I borrowed from the Hole In The Wall folks and explained the rotating hour-glass as a dhumroo; that clicked better than an hour-glass did. And because I began thinking technical terms in my mother tongue, I've now begun to appreciate technology much better than I did before. For instance, I learnt that the Telugu word for 'programmer' is 'kramakarta', someone who puts things in order ('kramam') That, to me, illustrated what computing was better than my four-year CS degree and many more years in the industry did; away from all those methodologies, best-practices etc., that's essentially what we do with computers isn't it, put things in order.

And oh, the iPhone is a true game-changer. I know it's a cliche, but here's my anecdata; been trying to get my granddad to use a mobile for years now. Actually strike that, we haven't been trying to get him use it, he has been trying to use it for years now. Invariably, he stumbles with SMS's and finding the contact list; he uses a Nokia 1100, and finds it very hard to appreciate changes in modes and such. Invariably, I end up spending 4-5 hours each time I'm home.

Now, he loves technology; he's been repairing, and re-repairing his trusty old cassette player for decades now, has an extensive toolbox to tackle any form of an electrical breakdown. He, however, finds computers rather mystifying, so all his technology interest stops short of mid-90's as it were; for instance, he keeps asking me to get him a cassette-playing Walkman, despite me telling him that Sony has stopped producing those a while back. (There's also a bit of a technology role-reversal here, now that my grandmom has become so computer-friendly, and him being so resistant, which is quite heart-warmingly amusing)

Here's the thing though: when I was home a few months back, I gave him my iPhone, told him how to scroll through pictures and then went away for some errands. He was still playing with my phone a few hours later; when I went to see how he was doing, he was actually looking up maps of the village he grew up in. Yup, he figured how to close the photos app, go to maps, looked up the current location first, then a few towns in India and US where my family lives, and eventually went back in history to look up all the places he's lived in. Given his usual experience with a Nokia 1100, to me, this is nothing short of astounding. I can only imagine what he'll do with an iPad.
posted by the cydonian at 7:16 AM on December 15, 2010 [3 favorites]


« Older Giving What We Can   |   "Serge Daney was the end of criticism as I... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments