New project! My husband Don Crowder (aka eldergeek) and I are so excited.

My mother is in her late 70s and has never owned or operated a computer. Over the last couple of years we’ve been encouraging her to consider learning and since she’s been a lifelong learner, she decided she’d like to. We live in Central Texas and she lives in Central Florida, a bit of a logistics challenge, but not insurmountable, as you’ll see.

For some time now Don has been refurbishing old computers, installing Linux OSs in them and giving them to people who want a computer but have limited resources. This was the perfect opportunity to really do something tangible for my mom, get her started on the road to computer literacy. We sent her a working system, tested and tweaked in our home, last week.

Can any of you remember first placing your hands on a computer? I can, it’s only been 4+ years since I bought my first computer and it’s changed my life. I remember quite well setting it up, sitting down in front of this mysterious, expensive mechanism wondering what to do first, and what to do next, and please please please don’t let me break it. Fortunately, I learn well from books so with a couple of good ones in hand I was on my way. Things accelerated dramatically when I signed up for as many helpful ezines as possible. Don was the writer of an ezine I subscribed to and when I asked him some newbie questions he responded generously and we became friends. The rest, as they say, is another story.

Wouldn’t it be a great thing if my mother could receive real-time tutoring from the very beginning? Don installed PCLinuxOS on both computers so we’d be working with the same system. PCLOS 2007 is absolutely the prettiest, sleekest, most newbie- and intermediate- friendly OS we’ve ever seen (can you say plug-n-play?). I wrote a very basic tutorial and saved it on the desktop with the title “Hi, Mom! Double-click me!” We installed Skype on both computers and with the headsets we both have we’ll be able to talk to each other, long-distance, for free. A computer with built-in live tech support, how’s that for newbie-dream-come-true? I’d be interested to know if anyone else is doing this or plans to and how it works out.

Now-the adventure begins…

Since my mother-in-law’s mobility and mental status has deteriorated in the last couple of years, she’s been spending a lot of time sitting in front of the TV. Now I remember what it was made me give up TV altogether. It’s awful. There may be a show or two that catches my eye now and then, but without fail after a few minutes, I realize I’m being fed stuff that doesn’t interest me in the hope of selling me things I don’t want. However, I do hear the dialog and one thing is quite clear-and amusing.

In show after show, especially crime shows, the Internet is portrayed as a dangerous, crime-filled underworld, filled with perpetrators ready to jump through your computer to do all kinds of unspeakable things to you. Nearly every outlaw of every stripe has a (music of impending doom here) *web site* (roll of drums and fade to black). Most sting-operation shows use chat-rooms (double drum roll) to seduce perverts into a motel room, to be filmed and arrested. MySpace has been implicated in numerous news programs as a setting for the evil manipulation of children.

True-and false. Perpetrators of crime have always gone where their target is. The victims of Internet scams are the same people who fall prey to scams, the ignorant or the greedy. The villian willing to rip you off on a business deal has always been with us. And child-molesters have always operated where the children are.

There’s a very good reason for television writers to malign the Internet. More and more, people are understanding what a time-wasting, soul-sucking monstrosity the TV is. More than ever before, I hear people saying, “Oh, I don’t watch TV anymore” and hardly anyone blinks. A lot of people have almost given up on an entertainment medium that does nothing useful for them. In nearly everyone’s home is an interactive library with limitless possibilities. You can play a simple game or you can do the research to earn a Master’s Degree-and everything in between.

Now there’s Internet TV available to anyone with a high-speed connection, if that’s what you want. Oddly enough, the most popular shows so far are how-to shows. There are podcasts, audio and video, YouTube, and a host of other media I haven’t explored yet.

So that’s the reason commercial TV is making concerted effort to demonize the Internet; they have a lot to be afraid of. They’re almost obsolete.