Listening to the Village Elders

I had an anthropology professor named Dudley DeGroot, who had spent a considerable period of time living with the Djuka Indians in Suriname, South America. He was an interesting teacher, and from some of his stories I received an early introduction to ethnographic technique. I remember a couple of tales that included themes of cultural transmission in general and reverence for elders in particular.

Of course, much of the cultural writing in our own society for the past forty years has centered on strain that the rise of the nuclear family placed upon the role of our elders, and upon questions about the relevance of old “wisdom” in a time of new “information”. And while it is the job of the young to alter their culture in new ways, the advent of first the world-wide-web and then Web 2.0 tools has given their users a capability to change the whole world in ways that make it nearly unrecognizable to the elderly. Importantly, while Shirky notes that having a computer is now tantamount to owning a printing press, we do risk losing the voices of our older citizens who aren’t poised to be produsers.

But NPR’s “All Things Considered” had a report this afternoon about nonagenarians Harry and Barbara Cooper and their website, “The OGs” (for “Original Grandparents”). With help from their granddaughters their posts and videos are a hit; their website is currently getting so much traffic that their host is struggling under the traffic.

I am pleased to see a story that shows that this brave new web doesn’t have to leave Poppop and Grandma behind.