Pointless questions

I’ve spent the last several days with my family, away from computers and email. This has given me time to ponder various trivialities far more than I, or anyone, should. In that spirit, I have a pointless observation and equally pointless question. Due to the near-complete failure of my generation to breed efficiently, my family skews rather old. When it comes to computers, the use-age distribution is about what you’d expect–noone over 75 has much to do with computers, 40-75 is more mixed, with some moderate use, and us under-40’s are mostly daily users.

Here’s my puzzle–another relatively new technology has an inverse age-use pattern. I’m talking about microwaves. My sister doesn’t have one. I use it only to occasionally reheat certain kinds of leftovers, at most. My parents use it for a bit more. But my grandmother–and indeed, all my elderly family members–use the damn thing all the time, cooking a host of items normal people wouldn’t dream of using a microwave for–any and all vegetables, “baked” potatoes fish, bechemel sauce (take it out and stir it every 15 seconds), and even scrambled eggs, which clearly take longer than in a frying pan. I casually mentioned how fondly I remembered the popcorn from my grandmother’s oldfashioned 50’s popcorn popper, and she said I could have it if I wanted to dig it out of storage–she only eats (ugh!) microwave popcorn now. I half-expected the Christmas roast to come out of the microwave.

So is this a common trend, or just my weird family? And if this is a larger trend, what explains it? Why would one technological innovation so captivate a generation of people who’ve had more than a half-century to become set in their ways? Or is it just that they’re sick of cooking after all these years, so they latch onto any time-saving device? Of course, the computer could save them time on a number of other tasks….