Say a person from a long time ago is alive today and you are talking to them. What do you think they are most surprised or shocked about, and how do you explain modern technology to them?

I’d give them to someone else and let them deal with it.
Have you tried explaining the internet to an elderly person who has no idea what it is?
Imagine someone from the past. ughhh.

I like this question.
My dad died Dec. 20, 1975 and didn’t get to see so much of the new technology. I have often wondered what he would have thought of the remote control, because us kids were the remote back then. I wonder what he would’ve thought of microwaves and cell phones. He loved gadgets, so those would’ve been something he would have ran out and bought. I wonder what his reaction to computers and the internet would’ve been. He was a people person, so he might not have liked computers.

I think they would be intrigued with the idea that you could use the computer to talk to people from all over the world. As for explaining modern technology to them, it shouldn’t be all that hard if they come into the future (now). However, if we went back in time, they might think we are crazy! Why I don’t think it would be as hard? Well, we’d have the tools to show them. Perhaps they’d be extremely fascinated with what’s in store for us. Who knows? This may or may not be the thing that most captivates them, but it is pretty cool!

That there is a black President.

My job is assistant/chauffeur to an elderly woman. She was born in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. She’s smart, and still has her wits about her, is semi-addicted to email, but is fundamentally distrusting of technology.

My sense is that if she put her mind to it, she could easily grasp why her cell phone and her wireless laptop don’t really “talk” to each other, but she’s at the point in her life where she just doesn’t care about these new things. The majority of her life she was without cell phone, without laptop, etc.

She knows it works sometimes and breaks sometimes and beyond that its just details that she is too old to want to care to learn. Enough is enough.

The youth, on the other hand, have been bathed in tech from day one. I know why cell phones and wireless laptops don’t talk because understanding the electromagnetic spectrum, and which bits of it are used by what technology, is (or should be) core knowledge for my generation.

Additionally, I keep up on what new tech is emerging, because I’m young enough that it really is all interesting.

I doubt very much that Mark Twain would be suprised.