A recent survey showed that a remarkable number of top executives have managed to avoid achieving even the most basic computer skills. For them IT is clearly only a work tool for others.
How wrong they are is patently obvious to more and more of us older people who, with each year that passes, find that we are being more and more cut off from this totally new sort of world, which is evolving around us.
Even the best of us can get it totally wrong when we're looking into the future. American President Rutherford Hayes said about the telephone in 1876, "That's an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?" More recently, circa 1946, Darryl F Zanuck, head of Twentieth Century-Fox, said of television, "People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night".
The great challenge of the new technology for most of us older people is getting started - the step from the friendly and familiar into an alien world where even the explanations are confusing.
Getting started is not hard if you have the right environment. Children come into contact with computers at a very early age. They start with games and develop their manipulative skills. At school they are surrounded with opportunities to use computers in a more meaningful way as part of the educational process and access continues as they enter the workplace.
Wherever one goes nowadays screens, (VDUs or Visual Display Units) are a normal part of the work environment. The great exception to this is that part of the world lived in by older people.
Most of our hundreds of old folks associations and clubs still see activities for their members in terms of bridge and bingo and line dancing classes. How many of them can boast a couple of PCs which would enable their members to move forwards instead of regressing into the early years of the past century? Do any of them organise classes or cyber cafes for their members? More often than not the hope is to recreate a past, or a fictional journey to youth, rather than to continue going forward, developing and learning - which is probably the most rewarding way to spend the latter years of a life.
To get started you need easy access to a PC so that you can practice a bit every day, until the basics become second nature and automatic; and you can concentrate on where you're going rather than on the driving.
A surprising number of older people, dismayed by the start-up costs, make their first forays online using the cast-off, rapidly obsolescing, equipment of their children. A bad way to start, as often the equipment has already started its journey to the dump and is more likely to give rise to an unending series of problems than ease your route through virtual reality.
Before you take the plunge and invest in a PC of your own, you will need to get some familiarity with what the equipment can do and which aspects are most exciting for you. Learn the basics first, to find out what your requirements are, and then buy the machine which meets those requirements.
The problem for most beginners is access. Any introductory course should provide this to some extent. But be warned, your benefit from the course will depend on you having an opportunity for daily practice.
This is a major difficulty for the financially disadvantaged and for the older retired. Little provision is being made for them. First steps are being taken in the libraries but we've a long way to go before every older person and every financially disadvantaged person has access to a PC and is able to become literate in a 21st century way.
The key role of information technology in enriching older lives has already been well established in gerontological circles. In residential homes in many parts of the world, computers for the use of the inmates are becoming basic equipment.
Is there any good reason why we can't follow the example of Australia, where access for all is provided nationwide?
A major Australian Internet company, Virtual Communities , has brokered a deal whereby the 400,000 members and 20,000 staff of the Australian Retirement Fund have access to hardware from IBM, and Internet access, for a token downpayment, followed by a small weekly payment over three-and-a-half years.
The offer includes an Aptiva PC and 36 hours of Internet access in the first week and half that for the following four weeks. Customers own the PC after the contract lapses. There is also a weekly education pack, which includes a colour printer and education software and a business package, with business software.
The deal, which is all about getting people on the Internet, is being provided by Virtual Communities at cost. There has already been a huge demand for the offer.
Let's hope it won't be too long until the opportunity to open up access and to bring hundreds of thousands of older Irish people online is seized.
mgorman@iol.ie