Moving with the Times

I had an interesting conversation with my mother the other day. She's 82 years old, and still travels all over the world. She went to China last year, a Mediterranean cruise this summer, and she's going to New Zealand in February. She volunteers at the Cancer Clinic, does tours at the Banting House, and works in her church's soup kitchen. I think she has one day a week to herself. I guess my point is - she doesn't let any grass grow under her feet and she isn't a frail, stupid woman.

She will not use a computer or the Internet.

A few years ago, when my sister was living in Thailand, we got her a computer so the two of them could keep in touch easily and frequently. Try as I might, I could not get her to understand how e-mail works. A two year old will sit at a computer and bang away until he figures it out - not my Mum. My frustration level was off the scale most days when she would call for help with a simple task that she just couldn't grasp. I kept telling her she wouldn't break the computer by hitting the wrong key - just DO IT!! Nope. She refused to learn. The minute my sister returned from Thailand, Mum ditched the computer.

So - back to my conversation with her. She plans to go visit my sister and her partner over the Thanksgiving weekend. She will be travelling by train. After spending several frustrating minutes on the telephone with the train company, she was told that she could only get a certain discount if she booked her trip online. "But I don't have a computer." "Well, you could ask someone who has one to do it for you." Simple solution - right? Nope. My mother would rather bitch and complain about how everybody automatically assumes that everybody has the internet than ask me or one of her grandchildren to book the trip for her. That would mean giving up some of her personal freedom (in her eyes.)

I tried to tell her that it was just the same as back in the day when only a few people had telephones. If you didn't have a phone you might have to ask a friend to use theirs. She refuses to see the comparison, and refuses to have anything more to do with 'modern' technology (which she honestly believes in not something anybody needs.)

My husband has much the same attitude to the internet and computers in general. He is able to browse the net to get his crossword puzzles and sports scores - but that's the extent of it. He doesn't have an email address, and is totally baffled by commonly used internet/computer terms. As long as he has me around to sort things out for him he's quite happy to be a mushroom.

Which brings me to my latest fun thing. As long as we have had internet service (probably 10 years or more) I have been fascinated by the fact that I can connect and converse with people from all over the world. In all that time I have never met in reality a single person that I have 'met' online, but I still consider many of them to be true friends. Technology has progressed to the point where it is easier to send a photo or even movie of a life event to someone 10,000 miles away, than it is to walk across the street with it to show a 'flesh' friend.

Podcasts have become one of my favourite forms of entertainment. I listen to people from my personal areas of interest and feel that I'm having a conversation with a friend. When I decided two years ago to teach myself to run - it was a solitary endeavour. I work on weekends, so running clubs are out of the question, and at that time I didn't know anyone else who ran. My family and friends thought I was just plain crazy. When I found Running Podcasts I felt that I had found my 'pack.' People I will never meet - but get to know through their weekly broadcasts about their own running experiences. It really makes me feel that I'm not alone out there.

It came to me one day last week that I could share a little of my running experiences with my online friends by making small movies of my runs and sharing them on YouTube. Here are my first two attempts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tlwRMV-BrY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZn-wNHJtQk

So there you have it. I'll make another next weekend when we run with the grandchildren. As time goes on and technology advances, quality of the movies should improve. For now - to me - it's still pretty darned amazing.