Do you teach the old generation to use internet?
ggchappell: Your question presumes that knowledge and understanding are the primary issues in getting "the old generation" on the net. They are important, of course, but I wonder if, in some cases, the critical issues are those related to filtering a large number of inputs.Consider: I'm 43 (and at least on the edge of what some of you would call "the old generation"). I find large portions of the web to be unusable without flashblock. I'm sure I have a well developed case of banner blindness (of which I'm very glad), but some pages are still rough.Now take a 70-year-old who grew up in a media-poor environment and has little computer experience, and stick a typical web page in front of them. If it's something to read, sure, they can read it. But navigation, search, etc., all require finding the right thing to click on, and ignoring all the distractions. Can they do that easily, even if they know how?I just went to the Amazon home page, certainly one of the calmer commercial pages on the web, and counted the number of clickable regions on my screen. Result: 143. I can easily imagine someone who knows what they want to do and how to do it, still having trouble getting it done, when confronted with that many choices.Now take that person to an animation-heavy page. They see 100+ choices, of which 30 of the wrong ones are insistently clamoring for attention. Is this going to work, even if they know what to do?The real question here is whether the kind of unconscious filtering we all do is something the old can (easily) learn. And if it is, how to best ensure that someone learns it. I'm afraid I don't know the answer to either of those questions.