I’m not saying or implying anything close to that Tim. All I’m saying is that older people are statistically less likely to use the Internet, and consequently are less likely to know what a browser is. That’s perfectly fine and doesn’t imply anything about their brain, IQ or whatever.

How about “Lorna Cockayne who first worked with a computer in 1944” as a counter example.

https://twitter.com/bbctechtent/status/431765489329897472

You’ll be over 40 one day and you’ll find it infuriating when vendors assume your brain fell out on your birthday.

Tim, declining Internet usage with age is a statistical fact, although perhaps not as pronounced in the specific age group you referenced: http://pewinternet.org/Trend-Data-(Adults)/Whos-Online.aspx

Again, I’m sorry if it offends someone, but we’re trying to deal with the reality here.

You need to be very careful with that sort of assumption. A 45yr old friend of mine was being pitched by some 20somethings. Their claim was that ‘only the young get the internet’. He finally got fed up and left saying ‘Listen sonny, who the F**k do you think built the thing?’.
Technology is like sex, people tend to assume that older folks don’t know about it 🙂

Dave and no, let’s not confuse correlation and causation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

Of course bearing children is irrelevant to being technical. However, it’s pretty much safe to assume that your mother is 20+ years older than you are, and does it really need a proof that as a whole, the older generation is generally less technically versatile?

I’m sorry if the choice of the example offended you, but let’s not allow dubious political correctness confuse the real point.

Right, kind of.

My mother wouldn’t consider herself technical, but actually has the only computing qualifications in the family. Her mother in turn predated computing qualifications, and wouldn’t have ever described herself as technical. But used CP/M for *preference*, which is frankly scary.

But no, I’m not technical because of my mother – she just picked it up when the rest of us did.

Which is one of the many reasons why the notion that is you’ve had a child or two, your IQ drops to the extent that you don’t know what a browser is just annoys me.

I think you just failed to see Dave’s point.
You’re saying that adult women can’t be technical, they need their male offspring to help them. It’s the same old “men are technical, women aren’t” bullshit that keeps mindsets from evolving and women out of the tech world.
It normative.

Dave was saying his mother was technical. And his grandmother before her.
In all likelihood, he’s saying *he* is technical because of his mother, not the other way round.

In any case, an entire interview on Would Your Mum Use This? is tired and backwards. Would your Dad use it? Would your annoying 12 year-old nephew who knows nothing about the Internet use it?
In essence, would people less technically versed use it?

Bearing children or not is irrelevant to the matter.

Thanks Tim. Good point about Safari; however, Flash is still just two clicks away in it.

Can’t agree with you more regarding mobile. I’d say that tapping mobile is our primary motivation for looking into WebRTC over here.

Everything you say is true (at the moment) for IE on windows desk/lap top.
However, with webRTC support in Chrome for Android, we are starting to see a (large) batch of users who can use webRTC on their mobile devices, but can’t and won’t ever be able to use flash on them.