-- NonaFarahnik - 05 Apr 2010 My dad has never made the effort to be fluent in anything more than basic technology. When he wants music on his iPod he asks me or one of my siblings to do it for him. It is painful to watch him use his blackberry. He probably opens a web browser 4 or 5 times a year to google something (after calling and asking me how to get to google) and has no idea about what he is actually doing or what is actually happening when he interacts with the Internet. He also refuses to learn. At the same time, he is a compulsive tech-shopper who always wants the latest version of what he cannot use.

Tomorrow, he is buying the iPad. The one thing the iPad will do for my dad is to sell apps that will give him simple graphic interfaces so that he might actually use the Net in a way that is productive for him. (It will also of course give him the satisfaction of walking into Steve's glass box and holding the beautiful device in his hands, but we can talk about that with Arnold and Leff on another day).

For example, I don't think my dad has ever used yelp, but once he has the app and just has to press a button on his screen to get to a portal and type in a business's name, he will. iphone users have already enjoyed this experience for a few years now, but for me, it was never appreciably different than my browser based capabilities. Now that I realize how the ipad will change my dad's ability to garner information, I wonder if this form of Interneting matters.

I dimly remember having to type some sort of code to order my first computer to do things. Today, I just click on an icon. Is something like this happening to the world wide web?!

How do you (anyone) think that simple application-based Internet programs will change the way users use it?

Or my dad might just be a few decades too late and we can't learn much from his generation's Internet use.