Turkey Tech for Thanksgiving?

It has become so common that it is not even a joke anymore. Family holidays used to be pretty much made for 3 things: good food, good conversation, and the same old argument with Uncle Earl over some obscure political or sports-related topic. But now, for thousands of Gen X and Yers, family holidays are all about bailing out relatives from bad technology which has taken ober their lives. Whether saving grandma from the Blue Screen of Death, or explaining to dad why his digital camera won't talk to the mainframe at work, the technology divide has never been bigger. Newsweek has a great article on this development.

Forget the generational tags you’ve already heard, like Gen X and Gen Y. We are the Tech-Support Generation. Our job is to troubleshoot the complex but imperfect technology that befuddle mom and dad, veterans of the rotary phone, the record player and the black-and-white cabinet television set. Next week, on our annual pilgrimage home, we’ll turn our Web-trained minds and joystick-conditioned fingers to the task of rescuing our parents from bleeding-edge technology on the blink.

CRChair and I make sure Mom has the easiest possible setup at home: an iBook for her computing needs, an Apple Airport for her wireless networking, an HP USB printer that works with the iBook with no additional drivers, and a digital camera that seamless works with iPhoto and which I used for year before handing over to her, to ensure it was fool-proof. But still she has regular problems with AOL software, her older Mac which sits in a corner of the dining room after a messy crash, and other stuff, which she wait for her boys to come over and fix. And with both boys working very intense 50+ hour weeks right now, it ain't happening easily.



And no, I am not the "Simple Nomad" mentioned in the article, mores the pity.