Dave had an excellent rant about how our local computers for seniors luminary was forced at gunpoint to write something about blogs. More amusingly, the man wrote back and informed us all that he's not old (followed by digs at Dave's supposed youth), and than went on about his health problems and why he's such a productive citizen, compared to all bloggers.
I'm not sure what relevance his health or volunteer efforts have to the whole discussion. I'm sure there's plenty of retired people who donate their time to others and have health problems who also don't spend their time whining about internet phenomenon they don't understand or typing patronizing emails to people that do.
Just out of curiosity, I looked at the organization that this man is the president of (or was as of the writing of the article), Computers for Seniors. Hmmm, this is where his volunteer effort is going instead of "penning blogs". Let's see, for starters, the site's title is "Compuers for Seniors". Teeth-achingly bad site design. Links to the Councils on Aging and local Libraries, must have taken all of two minutes to put those together. A nifty little article informing us of the existence of Netflicks and of Gardenweb. No offense, but if you can make it to the Computers for Seniors webpage, you don't need to be informed about Netflicks and Gardenweb. Heck, I've been visiting Gardenweb since 1995 or so. (If you like plants, do go to Gardenweb, it's an excellent resource.)
If this is a representative sample of his volunteer efforts, no wonder he doesn't like blogs. The sampling of links and commentary presented on this web site is frankly much poorer than what I would expect to read in a better than average blog.
I actually would love to read a good blog from a senior. Someone sharing their values and the links that catch their eye along with feedback from their readership. However, as long as seniors are being encouraged by their peers to think of the Internet as a scary place where wacko young'ns do inexplicable things, that's not going to happen.
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