Found smile

Found smile
Originally uploaded by Rotill

I spent the week-end scanning pictures together with my mother. My mother is 84 years old and her health is steadily deteriorating. Worst is perhaps the lack of interest in the world around her, the way in which she falls behind everything. Not that she is feeble-minded, not at all. But she has for instance been paranoid about computers for years, and not wanted to even listen when we have offered to hook her up to the world.

This week-end she changed her tune. I scanned some really old negatives she had never seen before, and kept nagging her: Who is this, where is this, do you know these people, can this be my father on this picture? With her bad eyesight she tried to get a glass to look at the negatives, but then I just enlarged the pictures on the screen.

Understanding technology comes with realising that it can be useful. My mother has never had the slightest interest in more news than she gets through newspapers, the radio and the television, social networking or academic pursuits. But this machine could help her see again, more clearly and easily the things she remembered and cared about. Finally a reason to care for computer technology!