THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 6, 1995 TAG: 9507060360
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: LIVING WITH THE MACHINE
Part of an occasional series on how computers are shaping our world.
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS LENGTH: Long : 124 lines
White hair and gray bob in front of the computer screens. Jim Moore, 70, is in charge. ``Who's got some figures for me? 99? 100? 140? Let's move on and calculate our cost,'' Moore said.
And they do, these 11 members of Christopher Newport University's LifeLong Learning Society. This day, in a class whose youngest student is 58, Moore leads an exploration of Microsoft Works, a spreadsheet program.
As the exercise starts out, everyone in the class owns a widget company, and so must figure widget manufacturing and operating costs, along with profit margins. Eventually, students move to more practical matters, calculating monthly payments on newly purchased homes and late-model cars.
Doris Epstein, who gives her age as ``in my 70s,'' looks up from the keyboard for a moment to reflect on why she enrolled in the summer course. She gestures at the narrow panes of glass to her left that line the classroom's painted cinder block walls.
``I thought Windows were windows. I didn't know it had something to do with computers,'' Epstein said. ``I love computers. I wish I were many years younger and started many years ago.''
By the end of this year, the percentage of older Americans with a computer at home will have leapfrogged tenfold, to 21 percent from 2 percent in 1980, estimates SeniorNet, a San Francisco-based nonprofit computer clearinghouse and on-line network for older Americans.
``Just now, computers are starting to become a real consumer product,'' said Richard Adler, vice president of development for SeniorNet. ``Older adults are looking at the technology and saying `Now we can see the benefits. This begins to make sense. ' ''
Seniors are becoming interested because they realize that computers and electronic mail enable them to stay in touch with family and friends, he said. Financial-planning programs also come in handy when planning for retirement and vacations.
For those who have worked in the sciences or routinely used computers, adjustment to the machine is minimal. But for others less educated or not as facile, computers can be maddening.
Older Americans don't fear technology, but they view it with a more skeptical eye. A bare majority of those over the age of 50 - 52 percent - say they like computers and technology. That compares to a 72 percent favorable rating among respondents younger than 50, according to a survey last year by the Times Mirror Center for The People and The Press.
``A lot of older people won't have anything to do with computers,'' said CNU teacher Moore. ``They seem to be a big mystery. It's a fairly small percentage who actually are willing to get hands-on experience.''
Williamsburg resident Duncan McIver, 62, is one of those who can't get enough of computers and the networks into which they're plugged. McIver says that in the mornings, coffee mug in hand, he often pads down to a home office he keeps in his basement, so he can ``read the newspaper in my shorts.''
McIver, a retired NASA engineer and manager now working as a marketing director for a small engineering firm in Hampton, subscribes to several on-line services and is able to read computerized versions of daily newspapers.
He is trying to teach his wife Pat about the joys of computing. It's a message McIver would like to get out to the rest of the world.
``My social friends and I talk about Internet,'' McIver said. ``I get excited and see their eyes glaze over. But once they're there, they're excited, too.''
For those shut off from the mainstream of life by illness or advanced age, computers can be a lifeline, says West Chester (Pa.) University professor of anthropology and sociology Douglas McConatha.
McConatha has conducted studies of the effects of computers on the lives of the infirm elderly, particularly those in nursing homes. He has a vivid memory of one of his subjects, a 73-year-old widower with Parkinson's disease.
The man, confined to a wheelchair, had a severely limited use of his upper body. But he was able to laboriously tap out commands with a pencil on a computer keyboard. Before too long, the man was ordering products and information from on-line networks: T-shirts, a VCR and the latest specs on Buick automobiles.
``He was transformed from a person in a wheelchair not talking to anybody to someone at the computer every day,'' McConatha said. ``He woke up from this difficulty. For a number of months he became a different person entirely.''
Norfolk Senior Center executive director Barbara J. Quale is spearheading efforts to set up the center's first computer lab sometime next year. Instructors would offer courses in everything from adult literacy to how to send and receive e-mail.
``Our focus is to keep people who are retired active and involved in the community, and a way to feel good about themselves,'' she said. ``The computer is a way of doing that. Computers offer an opportunity to broaden one's experience; life-long learning is something most people want.''
As the biggest generation in American history, the so-called baby boomers, heads into retirement, Adler of SeniorNet predicts a profound change in retirement patterns.
Replacing pursuit of leisure will be an intense involvement with creative activities and community service. Lifelong learning won't be a slogan, but a daily experience for older citizens who, on average, will lead healthier, more affluent lives than their forebears.
At the center of those lives will be a computer, or a descendant version thereof.
Agreed professor McConatha: ``Baby boomers will take computers quite rapidly into old age with them. They will be a normal part of life.''
Meantime, there is yet more computer instruction in the works for the Christopher Newport lifelong learners. Teacher Jim Moore plans to offer additional computer-related coursework in the fall.
``I remember a quote by (science fiction writer) Isaac Asimov: `I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them,' '' Moore said.
Elder Americans discover the world is at their computer keyboard fingertips.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff
Doris Epstein gets instruction on operating a computer atthe
Christopher Newport University computer room.
Graphic
Linds to SeniorNet and other seniors-related Internet sites are
available on the Extra page of Pilot Online at the World Wide Web
address http://www.infi.net/pilot/
KEYWORDS: ELDERLY COMPUTERS by CNB