[I'm speaking as a blogger [rubbish] and Twitterer [boring] of an age when really I should know better – tee hee]

Good Post and I’m a big fan of the blog!

Thanks again for the post. All the best…

Thanks for the comment, and the compliment. Generation gaps are nothing new – here is a favorite quote by Mark Twain.

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he’d learned in seven years.”

I understand where you would want to defend your post about silver surfers. And I believe you have a good heart, you didn’t set out to do anything except write a piece of satirical work. Like you, I have to stand on principle, satire is hard to write.
I’ve noticed this a lot with young people. Age, to some degree, effects how we perceive humor. What some young people see as funny, my generation may think absurd. And vice versa. Suggestion. Let’s agree to disagree about satire and humor.

The ‘basic computer skills’ I taught were how to use Windows. The classes were small, maybe 15 or so people. Even then I was older than most of them. The age range was early twenties to 50 plus years. The most difficult were the 30ish people. Even though they had grown up with computers they had no interest. Maybe they had no interest because they had grown up with computers.

Thanks for your good manners and being gracious enough to respond with courtesy. I respect that in anyone. And thanks for the link. I’ll check that out as soon as possible.

Great post! I am glad you decided to speak for the older generations reading this site. I think they needed some defense. The fact that you have something posted on an SEO blog is evidence enough that not all Silver Surfers are e-literate

I would like to address a few things:

First, I would like to defend my piece as entirely satirical. Satire is “a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn” (yeah…I Googled it, thanks Merriam Webster). It is also tongue-in-cheek, meaning that the ridicule and scorn is not meant to be taken seriously. You are not “doomed”, and certainly don’t munch on “digital Beefaroni”. It was not meant to be taken literally. I would really like to drive that point home.

With that aside, I enjoyed the post, and I like hearing a counter-argument.

Question, you mention teaching people “basic computer skills” and age not being a factor. What skills were these exactly? I never argued against age and the inability to grasp “basic” computer skills. Just curious.

I like the comment about the car having embedded systems. Definitely some truth to that. I don’t know or care about some of the stuff in my car. So yeah…it’s point A to point B for me too. However, its a hard comparison because the internet is so unique. I began thinking of contacting GM…If cars knew your favorite spots (RSS Feeds), stalked and honked at other cars (Facebook), and posted videos of their exploits (Youtube), I would probably be all over that. Lord knows that Mapquest (GPS) was a huge hit!

I am sure I will be a Silver Surfer before too long. My kids will probably think I don’t know anything, and I’ll retort “I was tweeting before you were a fetus…” and all that jazz too.

Ending thought – While this is not the exact demographic I describe…it was funny to learn that the British are doing something to remedy the situation:

http://silversurfers.digitalunite.com/

LOL my 1-year old daughter is better at hubby’s iPhone than me