Cutline Speaks

That Newfangled Technology

posted by Rachael on October 26, 2009

My friend who is in a Web design and marketing masters program here in Seattle explained to me over the weekend that people can be split up into two groups: Web immigrants (people born and raised before the Internet became a part of our daily lives) and Web natives (everyone else). For those of us who are natives, most techie things like email, cell phones, and even social networking are second nature. Most of us born into this world consider technology to be a good thing and believe it makes our life, for the most part, better.

But for a whole generation of people that's not always the case. Everyone has a mom or dad or older sibling or grandparent who views technology as not only unhelpful but totally frustrating. It's always funny to hear a friend tell a story about IMing with their mom or teaching their grandparent about email. My grandmother used to shout into my cell phone voicemail "Rachael! I know you're home! Pick up!" as if it were an answering machine. And don't even get me started on explaining Twitter to my dad.

I never stopped to consider how patronizing we natives could be to older immigrants, but I'll be the first to admit I do a fair share of snickering when these funny mom and grandparent tech stories are told.

Well, guess who's coming to the rescue?! Carol Brady! That's right -- the actress who played the famous Brady mom, Florence Henderson, has started a new "tech-support service for aging adults." It's a great idea and Florence is a great spokesperson to help older generations so that they too can be tech savvy with a little help. The next time you get frustrated walking your grandparents through logging on to the Internet, just sign them up for FloH Club. They'll get nice experts on the phone to teach them how to use computers and phones. This can only be a good thing for native-immigrant relations.