[LINK] RIP Printed Evidence of Payments

[Jan Whitaker]

At 11:39 AM 1/11/2013, Michael Skeggs mike at bystander.net wrote:
>Case in point, I am involved in a newish community group who does almost
>100% of our coordination online.
>We now have a few members who do not have access to email, and only patchy
>access to a website. Communicating with them is hard.
>They would certainly struggle if the only channel to monitor their income
>statements was online.

I can second this with regard to general community. I too lead a 
group of well educated women, some of whom turn up their noses at 
converting to computer based communication and record keeping. They 
lack skills and interest or time. We have a member whose children 
provided a dongle that came with their smartphone subscription and 
the account lapsed because her partner objects to direct debit and 
they have no interest in looking for alternatives because it's just 
too hard (her words). Another woman is comfortable with her business 
book-keeping system but is arcing up against moving our accounts to a 
spreadsheet template. These are our middle-aged members, too. The 
younger one is coming to grips with email and working with documents 
as she never had an interest in computers and doesn't really now, so 
her daughter and husband end up doing the work, but I must admit, she 
is learning and taking on more herself.

The fear and resistance is strong out there. Even in our computer 
club, there is one guy who is close to altzheimers and with whom I 
play groundhog day once a month because his laptop refuses to 
recognise our provided wifi LAN. I'm convinced his radio in his 
laptop is bad (no software reinstall works), but he keeps bringing it 
back to us with another 30 min of wasted time trying and telling him 
once again to take it to his hardware supplier for a fix or at least 
to show a successful connection. I'm talking almost an entire year 
dealing with this one. I hate it when he walks in the door each 
month. I don't know why he keeps coming back, frankly.

There is a shift toward improved skills and access, but it certainly 
isn't universal. And anyone who says a local library is going to fill 
the gap is kidding themselves. Our local is oversubscribed with kids.

Jan



Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com

Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how 
do you fill in the space between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space.
~Margaret Atwood, writer

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