Familial Technophobia
The holidays are a time of family gathering. People coming together at the feet of the matriarch (or patriarch if all those studies regarding women living longer than men are hogwash) to exchange gifts, well wishing, and other disingenuous pleasantries. This is also a time of horrifying anticipation for geeks and nerds around the world. This is the annual cleaning of computers and long winded, often confusing, explanations of hobbies, jobs, and functioning in an incredibly disparate world of those in the know and those blissfully ignorant.
I spent my own holidays with my family, and as many have related to me in the past week, I spent much of that time explaining what I do for a living, what I do for fun, and last but not least, hunched over a jaw-clenchingly slow computer doing everything in my power to keep from sending my boot through the monitor.
It is a strange experience, these annual info dumps and viral scrubbings. Not only are we suddenly the resident expert but we are also surrounded by people that have no idea what we're talking about. No one knows what an RSS feed is, or what the word "blog" means, or even why setting up a vast library of MP3s might be preferable to a big collection of CDs.
And it is thus we, the geeks, are faced during family gathering. Many of you are tempted to scoff and sneer, maintaining an air of intellectual superiority that only comes off as severe douchebaggery to your family (because it is). Others will try to drag their family members kicking and screaming into the 21st century, spending lavishly on electronics that would make any geek worth their salt salivate and taking hours to explain the finer points of internet culture.
Personally, I'm a little of both. It seems I simply can't completely rid myself of that sighing IT jerk from the back of my head, nor can I stop myself from expounding on memetics to the blank faces of my family.
What challenges do you face with your technologically phobic (or at least uninformed) family, and what are some of the best ways to gently push them into the blinding light of the technological singularity?
