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0 pointsdorkwood5y ago0 comments

That's basically how I taught my father to use a computer. It came down to two things:

1. He was terrified of breaking it, so I told him that there was nothing he could possibly do to it that I couldn't fix. I made sure to sound overly confident -- almost like I was challenging him to break it. That gave him the confidence to do whatever.

2. Every time there was a problem with it, I would Google the answer in front of him, and he'd watch me figure it out in real time. Eventually, he got the confidence to start Googling things himself. The tech support calls dropped off pretty steeply after that.

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toyg5y ago

Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day.

Teach a man how to google, and he'll never go a day in his life without being obsessed with conspiracy theories.

dorkwoodOP5y ago

You're not far off, to be honest. Just replace 'conspiracy theories' with 'extreme political YouTube channels'.

It's not all bad, though. He invites his friends over and shows them how you can find all sorts of cool stuff online. One of them the other day was apparently trying to stump YouTube with increasingly obscure woodworking joints.

I think most people would be surprised how many people are still out there who have no idea what the internet is or what it does. Imagine discovering that there's a machine that can show you how to do anything, or play any song you've ever listened to, and you had no idea something like that even existed.

znpy5y ago

Yeah it's nice and everything but don't tell that to your boss or bosses in general otherwise most of us will be unemployed in a few years /s

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