Forget all the scandals, podfathers and all the congressional aides. Here is a positive story about Wikipedia, which tells you that the online “user generated” encyclopedia is already mainstream. A friend of mine, Shripriya was visiting her family in (south of) India recently, and was talking to a college buddy about wikis. (Hey she is from the brainy part of the country!) She proceeded to tell her friend something like this…“Of course the most famous and compreshensive wiki is…” At that point, here grandmother (hi Mrs. Iyengar) who is sitting next to her says “Wikipedia”!!! She even knew how it worked and told Shripriya that she had been reading about it. Not sure if she was reading it, but still awareness is a good starting point. But still….
Absolutely. What is interesting is [most info gleaned from recent 3 week India trip] how mainstream new technology and the Internet has become for moms/grandmas. A few points:
a) Subscribing to SMS alerts doesnt seem exclusive for the yuppie crowd. My parents subscribe to SMS alerts for auspicious time [the whole ‘whats the best time to name a kid or do my housewarming ceremony’ ] from their mobile provider.
b) They also know much about Antivirus,etc–though they dont really do much about it. Nope, that is taken care of by the friendly neighborhood IT kid, as part of a 2 year service agreement with the computer dealer. [the kid comes over to scan, clean and even open up the hard-disk to remove dirt about once in two months]
c) There are email ids created exclusively for online magazine subscriptions [though mom still wonders why the nice Amy XYZ mails her so often. Spam is yet to sink in]
d) dayparting is all about email/IM time in the morning, browsing time in the afternoon and SMS game shows in the evening.
and my phone is laughably antiquated in the grandpa community of Bangalore [“what ringtones do you have? I have morning prayers for my cellphone” a 58 year old told me]
Claiming my Grandmother 🙂
http://shripriya.com/blog/2006/10/01/of-cool-grandmas/