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Why I hate Library Internet Kiosks
I often go to the local library on my lunch hour to browse the web and I hate it.
For some reason, library PCs are always full of toolbars. This one has the Google Toolbar. Luckily I can usually use (F11) to go full screen but sometimes they block that.
Another thing they do is disable right-clicking. Yep, got to make it a little bit harder to cut-and-paste stuff...
There is (sometimes) one tech guy in the place who is doing this job because he is retired. Yup, not because of any tech skill but because he just happens to be the retired husband of one of the library workers...
The other day we had a problem where you could only go to websites you had already visited during your current session. Obviously a DNS issue...
What was their solution? "Reboot the PC, that should fix it!"
If the answer was at least, "let me check the router" or "let me check the server" I wouldn't complain but... reboot the PC for a network problem affecting ALL of the PCs???
Grrrrrrr.......
Another thing they do is they order these beautiful machines from DELL, flat screen 17" monitors and all... What do they do? They run them all in 800x600!!!! With no ability to change the screen resolution!!!
I run 1280x768 at home and feel that is too small...
There, I'm done ranting...
Oh yeah, almost forgot... They make me use an old version IE which can't render CSS properly to save it's life...
For some reason, library PCs are always full of toolbars. This one has the Google Toolbar. Luckily I can usually use (F11) to go full screen but sometimes they block that.
Another thing they do is disable right-clicking. Yep, got to make it a little bit harder to cut-and-paste stuff...
There is (sometimes) one tech guy in the place who is doing this job because he is retired. Yup, not because of any tech skill but because he just happens to be the retired husband of one of the library workers...
The other day we had a problem where you could only go to websites you had already visited during your current session. Obviously a DNS issue...
What was their solution? "Reboot the PC, that should fix it!"
If the answer was at least, "let me check the router" or "let me check the server" I wouldn't complain but... reboot the PC for a network problem affecting ALL of the PCs???
Grrrrrrr.......
Another thing they do is they order these beautiful machines from DELL, flat screen 17" monitors and all... What do they do? They run them all in 800x600!!!! With no ability to change the screen resolution!!!
I run 1280x768 at home and feel that is too small...
There, I'm done ranting...
Oh yeah, almost forgot... They make me use an old version IE which can't render CSS properly to save it's life...
Comments
I offered my services to do something similar for my town's computer systems.
I had a long talk with the chief town IT guy and it all boiled down to one thing:
Resistance to change
There are too many people using Windows that will not change to something different.
The only encouraging news I got was that there is a lab in the high school that is running a linux network with openoffice/firefox/etc...
*edit* Oh, and one time, 'scheduled maintenance' made every computer perform automatic unnavoidable shutdown in a 10 minute window. Lucky me, I was entering in my test answers.
The problem is that right now, we live in a society of extreme illiteracy. Heck, people in the US barely know how to use the mobile phones they carry with them all the time. In the US most senior citizens can't use a mouse and keyboard. In South Korea senior citizens use e-mail and are considered old fashioned for doing so.
We should and could be making huge strides to fix this problem. The library is the perfect example of why we are not. The people who do have the technological know-how are not in positions to make decisions. If you look around the country at the few places where technologically literate people have decision making power, you see amazing stuff. Look at the stuff that happens at technological colleges and universities. Look at what happens in Massachusetts, Chicago and Germany where open formats and Linux save the governments mountains of money.
People who do not know about technology should not be making decisions about it. You wouldn't hire a librarian who didn't know how to read or write, so don't hire a computer librarian who doesn't know about technology.
I'm on jury duty and it's the lunchtime break!!!
The PCs here are fairly nice. I am using IE but nothing is locked down more than is needed.
In my job in the news business, I just finished talking to a gentleman who turned 100 years old this week. He grew up not only without computers, but for many years without electricity, automobiles, uh...fossile fuels, radio, television. I think I'm going to be bold here and suggest that he is inherently not equipped to use modern technology, and will never be able to use a computer. His brain has not developed the necessary frames of reference and theoretical architecture to understand and utilize computers.
What scares me is that I'll likely be behind the next major technological shift and will also find myself left in the dust. What happens if intracranial microprocessors become so common that they are implanted at birth? I think that will be the next logical evolution in tech -- wetware that replaces remote controls and automatic door sensors and keyboards and mouses mice meece. At that point, I'll be just as socially irrelevant as my grandparents, who can't figure out how to check e-mail.
I'm not sure I'd go so far as saying that. That's kind of a biological justification of a generation gap. Rather, I'd say there are two factors that contribute to this generational gap in technology. (Mind you, this is conjecture, I haven't researched this or anything. Though, hot damn, it'd make one nice little thesis.) The first is that there is an unwillingness to change on the part of senior citizens. Not just because they're old or crotchety or stubborn or anything like that, but because the technology they've grown up with is sufficient to them. Why bother learning about e-mail and computers when snail mail will do the exact same thing, without all the hassle and time and energy input needed to learn about this big, fancy new technology? They grew up without our "high technology," for lack of a better term, but that's the point; they lived, and succeed, without computers. The way they learned things, and did things, felt natural. In that case, there's no need for this fancy, complex, needlessly complicated piece of machinery. Older people value simplicity, and place emphasis on face-to-face interactions with others. Computers, e-mail, and technology, then, must seem de-humanizing and impersonal to them. The internet does have a sense of community, but at face value it's quite alien and strange to people who always knew the faces of the person they were communicating with. It's not that senior citizens' brains are "not inherently equipped to use modern technology;" when they were young, what they were using WAS modern. "Modern" is a relative term. But as a word, it implies more than just new, possibly better, innovations - there's the connotation of a changed, renewed culture to go along with the technology. It's not new solutions, methods, or innovations that are inaccessible to senior citizens - it is the changing culture in which those innovations are imbedded. Technology and culture are interwoven, and here in the US, it's not just the technology that's changing - it's our values, too. If we want our senior citizens to become "techno-saavy," we need to tailor the use of computers to values that they find important. I'm willing to bet there's good money in studying and implementing how to make the electronic and digital world more friendly and accessible to seniors - because right now, it isn't.
This leads to my second point: even if a senior IS "current," or wants to keep up with technology, there are very few places to do so, or resources available to help them. You guys gave the example of libraries: the people who handle the computers there don't know what they're doing, much less how to set up the computer for an elderly person or to teach them how to use it. There are universities and other institutions that will offer courses that teach exclusively senior citizens how to use computers, but in more rural areas, away from cities and colleges, these won't be accessible to the elderly population. Also, as I hypothesized above, people from previous generations value face-to-face, in-person interaction. If a senior citizen has no younger kin around to teach them about computers, then who will do it? Not to mention that the "old folks' homes" we relegate our elderly to can often be very isolating, depending on the place. So let's see... if our senior citizens don't live near a city or university, don't have any relatives who live close by or see them on a regular basis, live in an isolating retirement home, often with mobility restricted because they can't drive due to eyesight or health problems, and are regarded as stupid or stubborn by America's heavily-entrenched age-ism, how and where will they learn to use computers and e-mail? The only method left is the do-it-yourself mechanism, which many seniors would find to be too much needless effort. Not to mention that it means you would need to have a computer and know how to work it in order to use it to learn how to use a computer.
So, in conclusion: The elderly are not the problem. The generation gap in technology is no fault of theirs. It's the failure of our own society - our failure to educate and accomodate the people who came before us. We blame senior citizens for "not keeping up," yet really provide no resources or accessible way for them to do so. The only thing that will fix this technological gap is eradicating both technological illiteracy and age-ism through education of both young and old people; NOT waiting for the seniors to "get with it," or saying that "their brains aren't equipped to handle stuff THIS advanced."
Read the science. It's not about what parts of the brain are there; it's about how they develop.
I don't know what the reason for seniors lack of desire to learn about modern technology, but I do know what they say. Every elderly person I try to influence doesn't seem to see the benefit of modern technology. For example, I will try to tell my grandma's friend to get a Tivo instead of using her VCR. She understands that it is better because she will not need tapes anymore, the quality will be higher and there is an easy to use program guide. However, she doesn't care about those things. She doesn't mind switching tapes. She doesn't care about quality. Using the TV Guide is not difficult to her. They understand the benefits of the technology. It just benefits them in ways they don't care about.
I have one more guess. Seniors are mostly retired. They have all the time in the world. Most of the benefits of modern technology are time savers. That is the last thing a retired person wants to do. They have all the time in the world. Every second they spend not doing something is precious time wasted. Many retired people are very active, but most seem not to be. If they used technology to make their lives as efficient as we do, they would have way too much free time and nothing to do during it. Sending an e-mail in 30 seconds instead of a snail mail in 5 minutes is a huge benefit if you aren't getting enough sleep. If you've got an hour to kill, you want to take lots of extra care in writing that letter by hand. Perhaps you will even use some calligraphy all up ins.
The reasons for the seniors wanting to learn to use computers varied, but in most cases keeping in contact with family and friends was the main one. One was writing her biography, others checked results from their bridge club online, and so on.
My point is that there are seniors out there who want to learn, and those that want to learn should be able to get help by some means.
Also, on younger people picking up how to use new systems more quickly, if you look at all the time you've spent using computers since you were a kid, it's a huge amount. This is a serious advantage over someone especially given that today's computers are a lot more complex than the ones we started out with like the apple II. Anyone using a computer for the first time doesn't have that huge store of experience, and so needs to invest more time to get up to the same level.