I don’t know if you read The Star but if you did, you would have come across this story headlined “Seniors hard hit by costly postage” on 21 Feb, in the Nation section of the newspaper.
In the story, the president of SAGE (Society of Active Generation of Elders) says that their costs of mailing out letters (to update their members) had gone up since Pos Malaysia’s stamp rates were increased. Instead of the usual RM600 (in stamps) needed to post out the society’s updates, the society now needs to fork out RM1,000 because it now costs 50 sen to post each one of their letters.
And only 6 out of their 2000-odd members had email addresses.
If only more members had email addresses, how much cheaper and simpler it would be! It would be less taxing (financially) for SAGE to send out updates. Using email, they could keep their members updated on current happenings in the society on a more frequent basis too.
That’s the beauty and wonder of technology. Of course it could be argued that email causes a lot of problems too such as spam and viruses. But like all tools, one has to use it ethically.
Email cannot replace human-to-human communication but it can be a good tool to keep everyone informed, quickly, easily and cheaply.
Speaking of which, effective communication also means there should be more broadband penetration, even in city areas. And for senior citizens, they also must not be left out of this technology race. The more we leave them out, the more they fear this thing called Technology and believe it is only for the younger set.
And hence, the gap widens.