Washingtonpost.com: Generation Z, Meet Generation A

Byline: Robert MacMillan

I took a lot of heat over Monday's edition of Random Access, in which I endorsed New York Post gossip doyenne Liz Smith 's exhortation to use a TiVo. They claimed that I had condescended to older Americans like Smith, 82, in suggesting that they're not able to adapt to modern technology.

For the record, many people do reach a certain age when they adopt the word "newfangled" into their regular vocabulary -- but not all people. That is what makes an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer seem so timely. Reporter Deborah Bach visited Seattle's Ballard High School where the AARP 's Washington chapter is working with EarthLink on a program that pairs high school students with senior citizens to get the elder parties comfortable with high-speed Web surfing.

The GenerationLink program launched in Seattle in the past few days. Three high schools in Dallas got in on the act a year ago. EarthLink's Web site says GenerationLink, which first went live in 2002, also is active in Atlanta, Orlando and Philadelphia.

Bach featured several profiles in her article, including that of Ray Wiesner , 71, who she reported was more interested in the shape of things to come than talking about the good old days. "Wiesner used to eagerly anticipate letters about his great-nephew, a race-car driver who lives in New York," Bach wrote. "Once he learned that his great-nephew had set up a racing Web site, Wiesner decided he had to get online. 'I was hooked,' he said." And in a choice example of turning the tables: "Sophomore Gyasi Bass , 16, volunteered for GenerationLink after discovering, through visits to his grandmother in a nursing home, the truth in the adage about wisdom and age. 'They definitely have a lot of knowledge to teach us,' he said. 'Just talking with them and hearing about their experiences is amazing.'"

The story also focused on Margie Conover , who graduated from Ballard in 1933. Nearly 72 years later, she's learning from Soley Gunnarsson , 16, about Google and other search engines. "A former legal secretary, Conover said she's ready to hang up her electronic Royal typewriter and start composing letters on the computer her son gave her. She previously took a community college course in an effort to get Web-savvy but said [that] without personalized instruction, she learned little."

Another class of '33 grad, Katherine Herndon , said she's happy to learn about the Web from her tutor, 17-year-old Ana-Maria Standolariu , but that she "has no plans to turn into the sort of Net junkie who whiles away hours in chat rooms or online shopping sites. ... 'I like to get out of the house. I don't want to stay inside.'"

Not that I support online gambling, but it sounds like it's time to take bets on whether Herndon, when we catch up with her in a year, will be sporting a Blackberry , iPod or PSP -- or all three. She might like to go outside but that's no reason to untether from high technology. I spend a lot of time trying to deflate the hype that clings to tech, not just because it's tiresome but because technology is a means to improving our lives, not an end. Sometimes it's nice to forget about e-mail, the Internet and MP3s for a while -- more than just a few hours. But that doesn't mean that the Internet shouldn't be a part of everybody's life, and that's why it's good to see that young folks are helping older generations climb aboard.

I'm an Internet Major

Today's campus really does provide an instant, borderless gateway to new worlds of knowledge. What? Did you think I was talking about those musty old professors? USA Today reports that "the American college campus, long an oasis of scholarship and coming-of-age, is now being transformed by a more palpable force: an armada of laptops, cell phones and perpetual connectivity." While not a groundbreaker in news terms, the story provides good color for parents who wonder how their kid works on campus. Take the case of University of North Carolina sophomore Dax Varkey : "In class, he takes notes on the portable computer, sometimes instant-messaging or e-mailing friends if the professor is less than riveting. In his dorm, he instant-messages his roommate a few feet away. He's tethered to his cell phone, which he even uses to call a buddy who lives one floor above him, and his iPod, which supplies music for walks between classes." It's a long story and is worth reading down to the end, especially because of its interesting digressions into the effects of being constantly online. Consider this in particular: " Nig-Yi Zheng says she's used the iPod a couple of times to record lectures when she was tired. But, she adds, 'If it was up to me, I'd use [the money] for other purposes.' Some professors worry, too, that in the rush to expand connectivity, something intangible is being lost. 'Once you post lectures to the Web, it implies the face-to-face encounter of a classroom doesn't matter,'" says Duke history professor Elizabeth Fenn .

The story links to two other interesting resources. One is a Princeton Review chart of the most "wired" campuses . Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute comes in at No. 1, and the top 10 includes Temple , Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania . Another link is to a short article on how colleges' redundant technology systems can inflate students' fees from $100 to as much as $1,500 per semester.

Trends in Involuntary Liberation

USA Today also ran an article on the travails of travelers' who lose their laptops and other electronic devices. Check out the stories for yourself, but here's one excerpt worth highlighting: "There are no official counts of how many gadgets are lost or stolen each year. But losing devices is one of the hazards of dashing madly for a plane, train or taxi. Business travelers also leave BlackBerrys clipped on airplane seat pockets or cell phones charging in their hotel rooms. Some leave laptops at airport security checkpoints. Software consultant Joanne Langhoff of Cincinnati, looking for a mislaid cell phone, was once allowed to peek inside a Hertz car rental lost-and-found room at the Kansas City, Mo., airport. She was 'absolutely amazed' by what she saw: hundreds of phones, laptops, chargers and other electronic accessories. 'It looked like Best Buy was having a garage sale,' Langhoff says."

The stories that people tell in the article are pretty harrowing, especially for those of us who decide to store our lives in portable devices. It's a trend that seems to be increasing, but it keeps making me think back to that moronic comedy with Jim Belushi and Charles Grodin , " Taking Care of Business ." Remember when we kept this stuff in our organizers?

A quick side note: Yesterday's column featured New York Daily News item on how thieves are relieving New York City subway riders of their iPods. The New York Times followed up today, offering a perceptive comment from Elliot Aronow , a 24-year-old editor at The Fader, a music magazine. He left his iPod on a table at a drug store and subsequently lost 12,000 songs, some of which he said would be tough to replace. "All the value was really in the music. ... The thing itself was just a stupid device."

From the Grokster Files: Editorial Bored?

The Los Angeles Times weighed in on the Supreme Court's consideration yesterday of the Grokster case with an editorial that seems a little over-caffeinated. Here are two excerpts:

* "Even on a day when justices heard historic arguments on global online sharing of music files, let's agree it's hard to picture a U.S. Supreme Court member bouncing along to Gwen Stefani or Kanye West on an iPod. Lawrence Welk maybe, on an eight-track in a blimp-sized Buick ."

* "One can only imagine the justices' secret exchanges during oral arguments when they appear to be listening: 'Ck out blonds behind plaintiff table.' During a lawyer's earnest presentation, one justice messages, 'Zat a toupee?' The response: 'LOL!' Another adds, 'This guy's a napster.' At one point a justice begins transmitting photos of his new boat moored on the Potomac and contemplates a pier-to-pier trip to the Maryland shore . 'Zackly how,' another asks in a Reply to All, 'do they get all those musical notes into such a little box?'"

It's a riot but we still don't know if this is a real Times editorial or someone printed something that they didn't intend to print. Unfortunately, no one was at the Times to take our call before deadline.

Reception in the Big House

The Tennessee Department of Corrections does a good job at limiting the mobility of its convicts, but is having some trouble limiting their mobile phone access. The Tennessean reported in an article Monday that corrections officials have seized more than 200 phones during the past two years. The news reflects a nationwide problem that grows larger as mobile phones shrink, the paper reported. "Random searches are conducted, but the phones sometimes are taped to and inserted in places where they wouldn't be located during a pat-down. To find the phones, the [department] mainly relies on informants and routine checks of prisoners, cells, visitors and employees."

The phones often are used to facilitate drug and gang activity, as well as to coordinate escapes and riots and even intimidate jurors at trial time, the paper said.

APC, Baby You 'n' Me

The Toledo Blade brings us this off-topic but fascinating tale of the unwanted armored personnel carrier. It was a gift to Ottawa County, Ohio, from the U.S. Army that Sheriff Mark Wasylyshyn told the paper is costing the city money for nothing. "He had seen the tanklike vehicle in local parades. The surprise came when he learned more than $17,000 had been spent on repairs and that the sheriff's office had a second armored carrier stored on private property. 'We don't need two of them,' he said, quickly adding, 'We don't need one of them.'"

A few more details: "As far as he can tell, the armored carrier has never been used for law-enforcement purposes. It was driven in area parades and appeared once at the National Tractor Pulling Championships ... at the Wood County fairgrounds." Now Wasylyshyn is negotiating with Owens Community College to let it borrow one of the carriers for its future homeland security center. The Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station will use the other one, apparently as a security measure following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. I'm not a nuclear power plant security expert, as you probably can tell, but I am not sure what good that will do. I'm also not a military expert of any kind, but I wonder whether any of those troops in Iraq could use one of these babies instead of scavenging scrapheaps for improvised armor plating.

Send links and comments to robertDOTmacmillanATwashingtonpost.com .