Computers for the Over 80s - Internet, Google, Adsense, Facebook

Because I'm elderly - 81 and nearly 2 months as I write - I'm not brilliant with computers. I saw an article in a paper the other day that made me laugh. It was an article titled something like "Silver Surfers" and it was about people over 50 using the internet. For heaven's sake. My daughters are both over 50 and I wouldn't call them silver surfers. I don't think either of them has a grey hair. They're young!

Even I'm not a silver surfer - what a patronising phrase. I colour my hair. (Only a bit, with washout colour, not with peroxide or anything. I left that behind in the '50s.)

Anyway. I use the internet and I have a PC in my home study and I use the internet at both my daughters' houses too, when I'm visiting. At the start, before I'd ever used a computer, my daughters bought me a PC and I went on a short course in Guildford to learn how to use Word and email and look around the internet. I didn't do anything very adventurous; the idea was just to use email mostly to stay in contact with family members. At first I had no idea that if you had a query or question or wanted information on any topic under the sun you could just key it ito Google and get hundreds of results. My two daughters, son-in-law and grandson gradually showed me all the different things I could do.

I'm still fairly basic in what I do with the PC and the internet though. There's a lot I don't understand and a limit to what I want to learn. Facebook, for example, holds no interest for me whatsoever. All the Word commands frustrate me a bit too. Sometimes the text becomes small all of a sudden and I have no idea which key I pressed or how to make the text larger. And the other day I got something up on the screen that I couldn't understand and a message appeared beside it saying "What's this?" I was baffled. How would I know what it was? How would I answer the question even if I knew the answer? One of my granddaughters explained later that it wasn't asking me what the thing was - rather I should have clicked on the icon to get more information. A lot of computer "thinking" is lost on me. There are lots of websites that I can't find my way around too. I fly several times a year as one of my daughters lives in France, but she always books my flights. I haven't used the Flybe website myself to buy a ticket. I'm worried about giving bank details online.

My daughters helped me start this blog after one of them asked me lots of questions about my childhood. "Why don't you write a blog?" she said. I knew perfectly well what blogs were because they're referred to everywhere now - on the BBC, in the papers - but I had no idea I could just write one. They helped me start this and helped me register me for Adsense, explaining that you get paid for blogs if people read them. I'll believe it when I see it.

All this is in order to say that although I'm not very good with computers I had a pretty good IT idea the other day. I was in a pub in Shere, in Surrey, the White Horse - and got talking to two elderly men who it turned out were from Lancashire, like me. When they were young, they had friends who went to school in Kirkham. We didn't talk for very long but I guess if we'd gone through a list of names we would have known some people in common.

So I wonder if Google or some internet company couldn't make a sort of IT Contact Board or Message Board in a mobile phone where you'd note lots of people you know, and so would other people, and you'd get signals when someone was nearby who knew people in common. It could be quite interesting. Imagine if you're young and you get a signal that someone in the same cafe or train as you knows your boss. The Message Board would indicate the people around you and which person you had the "match" with. You'd chat and perhaps find out information on your boss from someone who used to work for him.  Or from his daughter. Or ex-wife! Or imagine you get a signal and find that someone knows your daughter or friend or neighbour. It could be a god way of extending social and work networks. It could also be dangerous of course. Imagine your daughter finds out that a brassy blonde in the bar where she's sitting has listed her husband as one of her contacts...

It could also be used as a proper Message Board. Say a train is cancelled you could put out a message saying you could give three people a lift to the West End of London, for example. Their phones would tell them where you were, so they could approach you. Or if you were outside a concert with a spare ticket, you could signal that to everyone too.

This is the only computing idea I've ever had and I expect someone will tell me that all that is already possible with some mobile phone or other, or iPod or Google phone. Never mind. I think it's not a bad idea and it just goes to show that even at my age, if you learn something new, like internet use, it'll get you thinking and give you new ideas. Even if someone else has had them first.