These days, the computers are loaded with programs to guide the kids through things. The main thing the computer is teaching is that if you want to learn, you sit behind a screen for hours on end, that you'll accept what a machine says without arguing, that relationships that develop over e-mail, Web pages and chat rooms are transitory and shallow. That if you're ever frustrated, all you have to do is pull the plug and reboot the machine. A substantial proportion of the growing number of Internet users is composed of retired people or people in their 60's, 70's, 80's and beyond. There are a wide variety of different ways in which older, senior Internet users can learn and communicate with one other through new technologies.
Online courses abound for older users.
But more revealing forms of communication are also highly relevant. For example, seniors can exchange video material from an earlier period which forms part of their experiences but which is rarely seen by later generations. Thus, bulletin boards with video facilities could enable older persons to have conversations in the present about topics which are viewed with less relevance to newer generations. Perhaps chat facilities could use a different topic each day and use video to stimulate the discussion in the interest of enlightening deeper self-understanding using telematics. The Commercialisation of Learning This week the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the USA recommended to its students that they purchase their computers from IBM, once the school's mandatory-laptop policy goes into effect in 2000.