Here's a bright idea: converting your emails/updates/what-have-yous into hard copies so that your octogenarian relatives may fully understand all those LOLs and ROFLs in a way that's comfortable and "closer to home".
It may be a bright idea alright, except that if we have to think "environmentally" along these lines, it would seem like the idea would generate a higher rate of carbon emission--getting electricity to power your laptops/desktop units to printing the emails on fresh paper, the paper having gone through a process that required machineries to run on electricity, gas, mailing the letters requiring fuel-powered vehicles...the list would probably go on and on. I think that's the major downside to this otherwise nice idea. Then again, Grandpa and Grandma may not be that internet savvy, which means getting to log on to Gmail to check their emails would be a big hassle for them. Therefore, receiving the printed emails may actually be beneficial for them.
Oh well. I guess it's gonna take some time to fully bridge the technological gap between the generation abc and the generation xyz. Until that happens, Sunnygram will continue to offer their services to help the elderly people get in touch with the younger ones:
"The company is called Sunnygram, a play on telegram or maybe gramma — though grandpas like Murray might appreciate the correspondence as, say, a Father's Day gift. Sunnygram is the newest entrant in a field of products trying to bridge the technical divide between those who e-mail and their loved ones who don't. Early efforts, like the Mail Station and Mail Bug, tried to create computer products simple enough for the elderly to learn to use. The next generation of services has scrapped that paradigm entirely. Instead, companies like Sunnygram, Presto and Celery are turning e-mails into faxs, phone messages or stamped letters — media senior citizens already understand — so that users can keep in touch on their own terms."
Italicized text aggregated from an article in Time.com and is copyright by its author, Jeninne Lee St.John. Please contact her for permission to commercially reproduce the article.
