Graham set up his own blog with advice about prostrate cancer

Graham is a retired policeman from Stockton-on-Tees. In February 2004 he discovered that he had prostate cancer, and during the course of his treatment he was often asked about how things were going.

So he set up a weblog and has kept an online diary ever since, offering advice and support to fellow patients as well as news on his own progress.

Stuart set up a residents' computer club in the sheltered housing scheme where he lives, and has three networked PCs on a fast broadband connection for them all to share.

And John, who retired early due to ill-health, has developed an interactive basic food hygiene course which he markets online through a website he built himself.

All three are so-called silver surfers, over the age of 50 but capable and confident internet users, and they have just been given awards as part of Silver Surfers' Day, an annual celebration of computing for older people organised by the training provider Hairnet.

Taste of technology

As well as providing an opportunity to applaud the achievements of Graham, Stuart, John and the other prize-winners, the day includes more than 300 events taking place around the country.

The fact remains that we do not have enough simple ways to do straight-forward tasks like getting onto the internet, looking at web pages or reading e-mail

Most are taster sessions, giving those over-50s a chance to get their hands on the technology and, it is hoped, find out it is not as frightening as it might appear.

Silver Surfers' Day has been going for four years now, and it is closely linked in with Adult Learners' Week, a national campaign to promote college courses, evening classes and other forms of adult learning.

I first touched a computer in 1981, when I used an Acorn Atom to control an experiment I was doing as part of my degree course.

I started work as a programmer in 1984, and saw my first Apple Macintosh that same year. I remember Windows 1.0, and have watched the evolution of applications and user interfaces over the years with a mixture of admiration for the technical expertise shown and despair at the lack of human-centeredness in most design.

The fact that we need special training courses, taster sessions, public awareness programmes and even awards is a sign that the computer revolution has failed in one of its key goals: we have not yet made computers for everyone.

Simple things

I do not believe that every computer should be easy to use, or that we have to strip out complexity from everything. But the fact remains that we do not have enough simple ways to do straight-forward tasks like getting onto the internet, looking at web pages or reading e-mail.

More and more over 50s are going online

Enough work has been done on usability and the design of user interfaces for it to be clear that this is not an insoluble problem. Making a system that people can use is not like artificial intelligence, a problem that simply gets harder the more you examine it.

Yet attempts to build a simplified interface are either patronising - I am old enough to remember Microsoft's Bob - or inadequate to the task and as a result many people are simply put off.

My mum is in her seventies, and has said she will never learn how to use a computer. As a result she cannot do online shopping, cannot e-mail her grandchildren and cannot even keep up with the plot developments in Coronation Street if she misses an episode.

We need computers that even she can use.

Computer mechanics

Simpler, better-designed interfaces are vital, but not enough. Because as well as knowing how to use computers, there is an increasingly urgent need to understand more about how things like networks and databases work beneath the hood.

As well as the media literacy that telecommunications regulator Ofcom is promoting, we also need systems literacy.

Patients need to understand how computers work

We need it because more and more areas of our daily lives are computerised. Unless we understand how these systems work we will not be able to criticise or control them.

The NHS is computerising all our medical records, and this has major implications for personal privacy, since these records will be shared over the NHS network and could be accessed from anywhere.

Unless patients have an understanding of how computers work and what databases can do then they cannot begin to assess that risk or decide sensibly whether they want to exercise the opt-out clause and keep their own records off the network.

The debate about ID cards has finally started to move from a discussion of the card itself to one about the national identity register that will underpin it.

This poses a threat to our personal privacy and safety, but far too few people appreciate this or are able to understand the issue well enough to engage in a serious debate.

As a result the government and its technology advisors will win the battle, and our freedom to lead an unobserved life will suffer.

We should not need Silver Surfers' day to encourage older people to get online, and I am sure Hairnet will be pleased when it is no longer necessary.

But there will be a continuing need to ensure that all of us, wherever we live, whatever we do and however old we are, understand the implications of new computer systems.

Perhaps once we have got all the over-50s surfing the net we can move on to teaching them about network security, database systems and routing algorithms.

It may not sound as interesting as learning to blog, but it could be a lot more important.