Wednesday 25 June 2008

Age is nothing but a number?

Yesterday i briefly passed Sharpnet around midday. Opposite me was a man in his late sixties, early seventies. I was so impressed by the fact that he was at an internet café and of course started drifting of into thoughts of how you really can do anything you want no matter how old you are. I know people in their fifties/sixties who don't know how to text so they have to call the nearest person to them when the phone beeps and get that person to read the text and send a reply. These persons would hardly dare sit behind a computer.

But once in a while you see older people who stand out in the crowd, defying those who say "I'm too old to learn about all the new technology" or "in my day we got by, by sending letters, why do I need to know about email". My uncle is one of those people. He, the oldest of the clan made sure that all the oldies around him, siblings, cousins and friends could text so they could keep in touch around the world. And the latest I heard, at 77 he is about to start his own blog!

As I was thinking these thoughts, I realised some issue had arisen opposite me. The older man was unable to open his document and the Sharpnet staff member was trying to sort it out:
"Sir, are you sure you saved it?"
"Yes i'm sure"
"Where did you save it? Is it on a pendrive?"
"No, it's on the desktop." After looking through the desktop file, "sorry Sir, it's not on the desktop. Did you save it right now?"
"No, I saved it on the desktop, this morning before I left the house"
"Oh but Sir, then it's on your home computer's desktop"
"Can't I access it from this one?"

After which the staff had to go through the procedure of saving documents and the benefits of having a pendrive for easy accessible files.

Still, respect to the older man, who tried tackling something that most of his contemporaries will feel too scared to even try understanding.

3 comments:

The Author said...

I believe that age is more than just a number, but this number is no excuse for not trying

posekyere said...

Hi Maya,

That is a terrific story.
I guess it was an opportunity for this man to learn something new afterall we all are mastering the learning curves life present us daily.

Maya Mame said...

Yes, I think you're both right, no excuses for not learning and we should never get to a point where we think we know it all.

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails