One of the greatest benefits of connectivity is that it doesn’t discriminate. In the past, generational changes could almost be defined by who used different technologies. It separated teenagers from parents, and parents from grandparents. Connectivity is different. It benefits senior members of society as much as digital natives, as the cases of two Irish pensioners prove.
It’s 14.00 in Dublin and Marie O’Gorman is pouring tea for guests in the kitchen of her house. She recounts how one of her granddaughters recently showed a classmate a text message she had received at school, composed with such textese as: "Gr8, CU later."
Marie O’Gorman
When the granddaughter explained that the sender was her 75-year-old grandmother, her classmate was impressed. Marie says, "Your nana’s cool" was the girl’s assessment.
A retired dressmaker, Marie exchanges texts and e-mails daily with family around the world. Her laptop, complete with mobile broadband dongle, is a constant companion, as is her mobile phone. "I do a lot of texting; you can’t keep me from it," she says as she counts more than 40 regular contacts in her phone.
Marie’s digital revolution started five years ago when her daughter and son-in-law moved to Armenia with their four children. "A few people told me about the internet," she says. "I don’t believe in saying ‘I can’t manage it,’ so I got an old computer and I took a class at the local college."
She was soon attaching photographs to e-mails and downloading pictures from her children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews in Australia, Africa, the UK and the US.
"I have a medical condition that prevents me from flying, so I’ll never go to America, Armenia or Australia," she says. "But with my mobile, I can just text or phone my daughter, and instantly we’re together."
Marie also uses web-based video calling, as well as researching her family genealogy and paying bills, such as automobile tax and insurance, online. As a volunteer teacher for a children’s knitting class, she also uses the web to search for simple patterns for her students. "This is living," she says. "The internet is really a marvelous idea, isn’t it? I mean, it’s a whole new world."
Fellow Dubliner Mabel Gargan also says that web communication has changed her life.
An 88-year-old member of Mensa, the international high-IQ society, Mabel starts her mornings at her desktop computer, checking an online news channel for the latest updates and commentaries, before printing out the daily crossword. "I’m very much into quizzes – either solving them or making my own," she says. "We take turns making them in Mensa, so I use Google a lot."
Mabel uses e-mail and her mobile phone daily to keep in touch with friends old and new, from Mensa, Rotary International and her local drama club. She devotes a substantial amount of time online to her grandchildren in the US, Australia and Ireland. Recently, she started using web-based video calling to talk to her granddaughter in San Francisco.
"I have another granddaughter in Athlone (Ireland) who keeps in touch with me via text very often – texting is a big part of her life," Mabel says. "I wouldn’t be in touch with my grandchildren half as much without a computer. They wouldn’t know where to find a writing pad now. I don’t suppose I would either."
Mable can’t imagine a day without connectivity now. "I can keep in touch with people who I’d otherwise have been writing longhand letters to, and they probably wouldn’t reply," she says. "With my family, it’s nice to know I can contact them at any time. They know what’s going on in my life and I know what’s going on in theirs."
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