Interview three people from three different generations, 18-35, 36-60, 61 and up.  Discuss with them how they use the internet.  What are their primary uses of the internet?  How comfortable are they with communicating on the internet? Has technology changed the way they live their lives, for the better or worse?  In general, what do they think of the internet?  Summarize your interviews on your blog.  These may be posted as one blog or three separate blogs (though this still only counts as one week’s worth of entries).  What do you learn from comparing the three generations.

 This was another interesting assignment. I hate using the phone but I do owe my family a call on occasion, so I literally phoned this assignment in by calling the beloved family farm and speaking to all three generations in one sitting. The three groups consisted of my dad, mother and sister. Because I had talked to them about this assignment more than three weeks ago, they all knew when it was due and kept pestering me to give me their answers. Then when I needed the answers we couldn’t connect. Many calls back and forth, I’ll try and put down some of what they had to say here.

My Dad, Age 67 (but who’s counting?):
My Dad is a good fellow but he’s been struggling with his computer for years. He’s a retired engineer so he feels he should be able to work his “infernal machine”, yet he can’t quite get into everything it takes. I answer quite a few questions about computers for him every week, mainly about how to get his older programs to work with the newer ones. Things like changing a WordPerfect file to a Word file. I found out that he uses his computer to research genealogy, a hobby he picked up when he retired. Really I should say I found out MORE about his genealogy survey. Once we got on that topic it was about all we talked about. So far he’s done a really good job of tracking people down by e-mail and expanding our convoluted family tree. He has a lot more patience for that than I do.

My Mother, Age 55 (She’s not counting):
 I turned my mom onto eBay a while back and right now she’s into the state surplus you can get here in Oregon. www.oregonsurplus.com Has surplus items from the state, so she’s always e-mailing me about computers and things they have for sale. She’s really into sending pictures. She has an old 2 Megapixel camera that takes pictures onto a floppy disc. Her new computer didn’t come with a floppy drive so she had to buy an external one to plug into the USB port and still send pictures. She also told me she looks up information about the Borneo goats they raise on their farm.

My Younger Sister, Age 28 (Mother of five!):
  My sister has embraced her computer but she’s still running on a 56k Modem. She likes taking pictures of her kids and so getting online to e-mail out to people them is something she specializes in. She has an old Gateway computer that’s about at the end of its rope. We can’t add any more memory and make it work better, I probably will donate her one of mine. Someone will have pity on that machine. AS Wood and Smith say on page 157, in olden times "...not every American could afford or operate an automobile in the early part of the century." She said the internet is cool and often asks if I got her forwarded jokes and what-not. Yes... (author pauses, rolls eyes) ...I got them. He's really not a muslim ya know.  

crushing your head, sis

Although this seems to have turned into a generational family assignment, overall I learned and confirmed that my family likes the internet; everyone is using it for different things and embracing it as a tool to stay connected to the rest of society without leaving the Shrute family farm.

Take care,
  -Sam