Forty or so years from now, will we be surfing through a slew of websites with names like “Granny’s Blog?” Will commenters have to gently tell posters “um, you’ve already told us this. Six times.”?
When my grandmother was no longer able to live alone and we moved her into the ‘Villa,’ my dad mentioned the idea of a computer – we have friends and family across the country, and it might be nice for her to have e-mail capabilities. The answer was an emphatic “no.” She has a phone, and a large TV, and her newspapers, so she’s in touch.
My parents, on the other hand, are both computerized (I don’t mean that they’re robots. I have no proof of that.). So when the time comes that one or both of them need the kind of living arrangement that my grandmother has, I assume we’re going to have to make sure there’s a DSL connection in the room.
When it’s my turn, my antique laptop computer will no doubt be a source of amusement for the strapping young orderlies, whom I’ll probably bore to tears with my tales of yesteryear, when we thought OC-768 was the height of technology.
“It used to take upwards of five minutes to download a file that big, in my day. Now, about that sponge bath…”