My thoughts exactly. I don't use AOL myself but my ISP filters spam and I have to look carefully through my spam list every day to find e-mail from customers and potential customers that it has filtered out, to unblock it and add to my whitelist. I'm also involved in some organizations and the first time any group member e-mails me, the spam filter usually blocks it (even though I have it set to the minimum aggressiveness possible). So for anyone involved in organizations or running a business, you have to be able to receive e-mails from people that have not e-mailed you in the past, where you may not be expecting e-mail from them and where you probably don't know their phone number and they may not know yours so calling is not an option.
And for customers who have AOL, it is a real problem if I can't reach them because they will think I didn't respond to their query. We have a very small home-based business and can't afford to pay for sending e-mail (such as paying Hotmail $2K).
Your memory problems are not necessarily from an early intro to the PC. It may just be how your mind works. I have always had difficulty with short-term memory and I am too old to have grown up with the PC. I'm 47 and when I was in high school, they were arguing over whether to allow us to use a calculator in chemistry class or if we had to learn the slide rule. PCs did not come along until much later after that. I didn't have low grades, though, maybe because I had enough smarts in other areas to offset the memory issues. I remember really struggling in classes in college that required a lot of memorization, like organic chemistry. I grew up playing the piano & violin and always found it quite difficult to memorize pieces (we were required to memorize solo pieces that were to be performed). But I was very talented at sight reading (which means playing a piece of music that you have never seen before, while reading the printed music from the page). Also, I am horrible at remembering names or even faces, of people I meet. Unless I really concentrate hard, their name goes in one ear and out the other. And then if I see the person later in a different context, it can be really difficult for me to figure out who they are and where I know them from. And when I am at a new job, it takes me quite a while to learn everyone's name and be able to tell people apart if they look similar (like men in their 20's with very short hair). Yet I am very smart in other ways. I've decided that's just how my mind works and I rely on crutches, like my palmtop computer, to help me remember things.
Slashdot Mirror
My thoughts exactly. I don't use AOL myself but my ISP filters spam and I have to look carefully through my spam list every day to find e-mail from customers and potential customers that it has filtered out, to unblock it and add to my whitelist. I'm also involved in some organizations and the first time any group member e-mails me, the spam filter usually blocks it (even though I have it set to the minimum aggressiveness possible). So for anyone involved in organizations or running a business, you have to be able to receive e-mails from people that have not e-mailed you in the past, where you may not be expecting e-mail from them and where you probably don't know their phone number and they may not know yours so calling is not an option. And for customers who have AOL, it is a real problem if I can't reach them because they will think I didn't respond to their query. We have a very small home-based business and can't afford to pay for sending e-mail (such as paying Hotmail $2K).
Your memory problems are not necessarily from an early intro to the PC. It may just be how your mind works. I have always had difficulty with short-term memory and I am too old to have grown up with the PC. I'm 47 and when I was in high school, they were arguing over whether to allow us to use a calculator in chemistry class or if we had to learn the slide rule. PCs did not come along until much later after that. I didn't have low grades, though, maybe because I had enough smarts in other areas to offset the memory issues. I remember really struggling in classes in college that required a lot of memorization, like organic chemistry. I grew up playing the piano & violin and always found it quite difficult to memorize pieces (we were required to memorize solo pieces that were to be performed). But I was very talented at sight reading (which means playing a piece of music that you have never seen before, while reading the printed music from the page). Also, I am horrible at remembering names or even faces, of people I meet. Unless I really concentrate hard, their name goes in one ear and out the other. And then if I see the person later in a different context, it can be really difficult for me to figure out who they are and where I know them from. And when I am at a new job, it takes me quite a while to learn everyone's name and be able to tell people apart if they look similar (like men in their 20's with very short hair). Yet I am very smart in other ways. I've decided that's just how my mind works and I rely on crutches, like my palmtop computer, to help me remember things.