Never has the generation gap widened as much as with the spread of computing and the Internet. Even as the old struggle to cope with digital technology, the young are making sure it pervades life.

Yet, a few have made an ally out of the enemy. They are using the unprecedented connectivity at their fingertips to enter the world of the young. The Internet that once divided can also unite.

Here are three experiences that extend hope:

55/f/bangalore
Rhea Usha Pilai. Housewife:

I got online when I needed to mail my sons in the US. I would trudge to cyber cafés to mail them. Later, I managed to get a computer at home.

Initially, I had a lot of problems because my son bought me a secondhand computer. I would crib to him about how the machine would stall every five minutes. And then, he sent one of his friends to help me out.

Though I have been meeting my son's friend in the flesh, this one visited me online. Nirav is an engineer working with Wipro in Bangalore. He gave me instructions via email. Then I graduated to MSN Messenger as I sought more help. I would be pathetically slow at typing and this impatient youngster would be tapping away at the keyboard. He spent one hour giving me detailed instructions on why he thought my machine was not working the way it should and how I should recheck all the wires and connections from the CPU.

Soon, I not only got to know Nirav but all of Sanjeev's friends. Boys and girls would write in to me so that I could test my email skills, forward jokes and also common letters sent to them by Sanjeev. They showed me how to chat, join egroups for parents whose children are living abroad and even download recipes.

The Internet helped me get to know my son and his friends better. In fact, I didn't chat much with my son because of the difference in the time zones. But I would end up chatting and emailing his friends more often. So much so, that today, they are better friends of mine than his.

62/f/albany, ny
Elaine Frankonis. Writes blogs Kalilily Time and Blogsisters:

It all started for me when my son, who was blogging on his site long before there were blogging tools, suggested that I needed my own place on the Web.

He lives across the country from me. So I had been sending him email messages, commenting on various current issues. And he had been posting them on his blog. It got to the point where he felt compelled to tell me that it was time to cut the cord and fly on my own.

In a real way I rode into the blog community on my son's coattails because I used his list of blog contacts as my own! I checked out the blogs on that list and started my own as simply a place to share my perspectives. Soon, my blog turned into a dynamic hub that began generating new perspectives, new acquaintances, new challenges, new opportunities and even new friendships.

I communicate now with people I would never have a chance to meet in person: the young man in South Africa playing super-mom for his family; the playful Scotsman whose brain constantly bubbles with zany schemes that we can't help but buy into; the bright, articulate, young woman writer in India whose rich blog keeps me linking all over the world.

(This 'young woman writer in India' is Anita from the pages of Rediff Guide to the Net. On Anita's blog, Elaine posted a comment: I read your blog just about every day and have to say that I always find your links the most interesting of all the sites that I check up on. I'm old enough to be your mother and blogs like yours keep my mind ever-extending and learning. Actually I went and registered at that site that lists bloggers by birth date. I think I'm the next to the oldest one).

The blogs that these and other individuals share might be all lies. But I doubt it. Their sites include resumes, sometimes photos. These are not anonymous chat room lurkers. These are my new friends. While I tell people that I'm on a 'quest' for bloggers my own age, the truth is, age, race or any other of the other boxes we put each other into doesn't matter.

Having been a teacher, earlier in my career, I am very interested in what young people think, hope and care about. I have always liked having younger people around because I feed off their energy.

The older I get, the harder it is to keep in touch with all of that. I find that the 'Land of Blog' is populated mostly by individuals the ages of my 30-something kids or younger. They are creative, caring individuals struggling to survive economically and emotionally.

What I think, though, is that perhaps young people get along better with me because what they see and respond to has nothing to do with what might have been their immediate visual real-world perception of me an 'older person'.

35/m/mumbai
Sunil Krishnan:

It began with a simple a/s/l like most chats do. And then over chats about cricket, the Olympics preparations that were to be held in Australia in the coming year, then 28-year old Sunil Krishnan got to know Elena from Australia in a Yahoo! chat room.

"We hit it off immediately. My friends would tease me when I would chat with Elena. little realising that she was old enough to be my mother!" says the young software designer.

For Elena, it was her first day in a chat room. "I had just created my email address and was just learning how to chat. So the usual a/s/l message later, I began chatting with Sunil.

"For me, Sunil was unlike most of the youngsters I have ever met or even people I have chatted with. He was polite, he was very caring and not the usually boorish lot that one gets to know online. We even exchanged pictures online… We would talk about our families, the different countries, the difference in work cultures and lifestyles that one has seen."

They chatted over a few months. For Elena, the exchanges via email and in the chat room were enough to trust Sunil. So when he invited her to come to India and holiday, Elena took the offer with another friend of hers. She says, "He came to pick us up at the airport, showed us the city… I've got to know a lot about India because of him. I knew that I could actually trust him to take care of us…. I knew, that he was a genuine person and despite not having met him, I knew that he was not somebody who would take us for a ride!"

Explains Elena, "I even introduced him to close friends at work and people within my family online. In fact, the Internet made life so simple for us that not once did I ever feel we were living a few continents away! And I found him very easy to talk to. In fact, he also helped me become more Net savvy, explaining the ins and the outs of the Internet!"

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