For Thursday, November 5, 1998 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 730 words

Family webs

I hope people enjoyed last week's story about my daughter's house-warming party. I received several compliments from readers who felt as good as I did to hear a story about families and friends working together. Those experiences are core to harmonic living, in my humble opinion.

As a segue to this week's story, I want to mention three other people who helped our kids in ways other than painting. I want to thank Bart Bates, the mortgage broker from Commerce Security who made it happen. The kids' Sacramento broker was jerking them around, asking too many fees. Kristi called us with "What to do?"

Susan knew. "Call Bart," she said, and the house was theirs.

The other two helpers are the main players in this week's story -- Nana and Papa, Susan's folks. They helped with advice that comes from two lifetimes in the real estate business. Nana helped with the fine print and Papa taught the kids how to hang tough and low-ball.

This week it's not a house that brings people together, it's a computer. Nana is going on the Net. Nana is 80 and so is Papa, and they just got their first computer.

We've been talking about it with them for months now. They weren't sure they could master the technology, but they wanted to join in sending email and chatting with their grandkids.

"Seniors are the fastest growing audience on the Net," says Tom Poole, founder of Senior.Com, an informative web site for elder surfers. Seniors are logging in all over the world, and they're not hooking up just so they can contact doctors, hospitals and pharmacies. They are interested in the same things as everyone else -- news, sports, politics, history, literature, live chat.

Susan and I plugged in Nana and Papa's computer on Saturday morning up in Leisure Town. Things went smoothly. Connecting to the Internet required typing a local phone number into the Windows95 dialer and clicking on "connect." We were online (not America Online) in five minutes.

By coincidence we noticed that my 73-year-old mother was online back in Pennsylvania. Her name "Boots" was lit up on our ICQ menu. We beeped her with a hello message and she beeped us back. Within a minute Susan's mother and my mother were typing back and forth about raking leaves and the beautiful fall colors.

We didn't want to overwhelm the folks with too much information too soon. They didn't want to be overwhelmed either. We chatted awhile, printed a practice letter in large fonts for Papa, and learned how to turn the machine off.

Sunday evening I called Nana to ask if she'd used the computer. "Yes," she said. "I turned it on and turned it off just fine."

"Great," I said. "What did you do while it was on? Did you play solitaire or write some email?"

"No," she said. "I just practiced moving that mouse around."

By the third day, she had written her first email message. It was to Gavin, the youngest grandson. She hasn't figured out how to send it yet. We'll go up sometime this week for another training session. Already they've ordered a second phone line in the rear study.

Papa's eyes aren't so good. We hooked him up with audio feeds from the Wall Street Journal and CNN, and installed a giant mouse arrow. After he learns the mouse, he can listen to the Internet. It should remind him of HAM radio.

All this makes me wonder if seniors in Benicia are finding the help they need to learn about computers and the Internet. The luckier ones have relatives who can fly in if necessary and set them up. "Who helps the rest?" I wonder as I sit here in this big, empty high school computer lab preparing to help teachers learn about computers and the Internet.

Surfing habits of seniors are also different in significant ways. When seniors visit a web site they tend to stay much longer than younger users. Seniors take the time to read deeply into the material. They are also more interested in textual content than in streaming video and multimedia. Technology for technology's sake doesn't appeal to seniors. If it serves a function, that's different.

Besides, imagine the joy of being in immediate contact with all your relatives every time you sit down at your computer.