Mothers and Technology
January 12, 2009My mother is really an intelligent woman– except when it comes to technomologimical stuff.
As you may recall, I bought her a laptop for Xmas. Which she cooed over and loved dearly. She was so excited to set up Internet service and everything. It was quite cute.
Well, the Internet guys came out last Thursday and got her all hooked up and installed on her computer. So she is a wireless badass mofo now!
Only she has trouble actually getting on the net.
The first issue is that the mouse trackpad is right on that ragged edge of what she’s comfortable using. The coordination required is frustrating her to no end.
Secondly, some of the nuances of actually navigating the net are semi-foreign to her.
This weekend I spent over an hour on the phone with her trying to set up gmail and video chatting. It went something like this:
cb: I just sent you an invite to gmail. Check your qmail…
Mom: ok. Lemme see… First I need to log on…. Then… Ok, I see your mail…
Cb: open it and accept the invite and sign up
Mom: ok. So I click on that linky thing?
Cb: yes. Then google will walk you through
Mom: ok. Oh gosh. I have to type in all sorts of information… First name…
Mom: ok- but now it’s asking me to type some word thing
Cb: yes. It’s for security. Just type what you see…
Mom: but the word doesn’t make sense
Cb: it isn’t supposed to.
Mom: I can’t read it.
Cb: it may be just gobbledygook. Just type what you see
Mom: but it’s all smooshed…
Cb: mom, ya gotta type it or the signup won’t work
Mom: why do they make you do this. This is just stupid.
Cb: mom. Type it.
Mom: Hmmm, what is this one? Looks maybe like a percent sign…
Cb: mom? Forget it. Close out of your Internet. I’m going to do the signup for you.
Cb: ok mom. You have gmail. Go to www.gmail.com and try it
Mom: ok… So here I type my name and password… And look! It looks like It worked!! Now, how do we set up the video thingy??
Cb: sigh…
The remainder of my time was spent sending her an invite to video chat and then trying to walk her through the installation process over the phone.
Try as we might, we could NOT get her video chatting to work. For some reason, gchat was not recognizing that mom’s Dell computer has a built in iSight camera.
What a clusterfuck.
With the brilliant apple technology, the camera just turns on automatically when you accept video chatting. Evidently not the case with the Dell (and vista).
So, in addition to found research on Dells and the damn built-in camera, now I will have to make a trip to Iowa to try to solve her dilemma and give her web tutorials, or she will have to transport her laptop up here.
Oh, and she will be getting a mouse. Because those she understands.
I listened to Randy on the phone one day talking to his dad. “Now click the right button and select copy from the menu… no dad that is the left button… no now you are renaming the file… right click… Right click… the right side of the mouse there is another button!”… LOL… bless their hearts…
I think you could use this transcript for any interaction between moms of a certain age and their offspring. It took years for mine to get comfy with Windows (her choice) and teh intarwebs. I’ve been wanting to buy her an iMac for ages but my sisters insist she wouldn’t be able to make the adjustment, and they may be right, but her PC is a noisy old piece of shit that’s going to blow up any day now.
Here’s what I’ve found with Windows XP and attached camera, you have to run a utility called splitcam to get it to recognize the camera.
Real pain in the ass but it works.
You’re the stupid one for not buying her a Mac. Pay no attention to what old people say about not being able to adjust to a Mac. It’s basically designed with the senile in mind. It simply does what you want it to. Shit man what does Apple have to do to convince old people to buy one, include a bowl of tapioca pudding with every machine?
Also… mmm tapioca!
I used to work for PayPal helping mostly older folk navigate through the website over the phone, your mother’s difficulty sounds like a walk in the park.
I spend more time on the phone to my Dad back in Ireland helping him with his new computer too. It drives me around the bend but he has no one else to help him. I once spent two whole days trying to get him to load the software for his webcam. I don’t mind telling you that I was ready for the nut house by the time the two days were over. But given that he has never ever seen a pc up close up and he only started to learn in his 70s I think he is doing pretty good.
Now there’s a familiar conversation. My parents want to buy a computer and get online but I forbid it, its bad enough that I have to field calls from them each week asking how to operate their mobile phone, DVD player, VCR, stereo, set-top box and various bits and pieces in their cars, none of which I’m particularly familiar with. I can’t wait until I’m that age and can haunt my kids with that stuff, all I need now is children to annoy!
I worked in tech support for a major PC manufacturer from 1985-1987. I still have an aversion to the phone 20 years later. Think your Mom times 50 per day, with pressure on the other side to crank through as many calls as possible. Ugh.
My mom got hooked up to the internet by her grandson, who was 13 at the time and who built computers as a hobby and before long she was playing bridge online with teh gays.
You know, you can’t hide from your mom now – she’ll know when you’re online now. bwaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
I’m kinda like your mom when it comes to technomological stuff…if i focus for long enough, i can figure it out. but i have a short attention span, which can lead to lots of instances of me not figuring shit out. RG has a point…be careful when you chat those fetish rooms or she’ll get a message like: cb has invited you to join him on the hot nasty dirty piggy bear lovers site! click “yes” to join the manasty fun!
With what I do now and my brother being a designer and on the tech edge of everything, it’s funny to think that my Mom was actually the first in our family to have a laptop (from work) and be on the internet back in the early/mid 90’s. She would get the instruction manuals for every program and read front to back. I’d toss mine aside as I opened the box and just find my own way. Once technology (and her kids) kept advancing, she would become more like your mom in “How do I do this….” and it was frustrating if I couldn’t see what she saw. So every trip home also became a tech update. At least she had the basics down.
I don’t blame her about the lack of a mouse. I MUST have a mouse, or my computing takes 10 times longer.
I know that this may be a little late, BUT I use a program called “Crossloop”. It is available for Free at http://www.crossloop.com
You both have to download the program to use it and then you can log into it and “See” your mom’s desktop, control her mouses, transfer files etc.
IT HAS BEEN A LIFESAVER for me when my any of my 6 sisters call and say…. “I clicked on something and now it won’t…”
Rather than taking hours over the phone for a two minute fix I just tell them to start Crossloop.
Oh, and every time you log on they have to give you a new security number and then have to accept you. So you can’t log in without them knowing.