With his family spread out from New York to Greensburg, Pa., to the San Francisco Bay, Andrew Gold, C’94, thought it was important for his parents to learn to use the Internet so they could all keep in touch. But the Silicon Valley pro was having trouble convincing David Gold, C’57, an attorney, and Nancy Gold, a busy volunteer, to enter the strange new world of hypertext and electronic mail. Like most of his friends’ parents, they didn’t grow up with computers and felt it would be nearly impossible at their ages to learn their way around the World Wide Web.
Now, after some patient hand-holding from their son, they both feel comfortable sending e-mails and browsing the Web. Gold has written Walk with Me through the Internet (Sunshine Daydream Press), a 99-page introductory guide for other Net newcomers like his parents. “I was saying, ‘Listen, I understand you’re new and I’m not going to hold that against you. I’m going to talk to you the way I would talk to my parents. I’m going to be gentle and not pretend that there are a lot of things you need to know.'” With the image of a journey in mind, Gold says he tried to point out the “main landmarks” of the Internet just as someone might do for a friend visiting a city for the first time.
Gold says he worked with his parents (as well as his sister, Carolyn, C’92) to make the book understandable for novices. From their input, for instance, he realized, “There are two concepts that don’t sink in: That e-mail is free and that you can send the same e-mail to more than one person.”
While a student at Penn, Gold mulled over a medical career. Soon after graduation, however, he headed out to San Francisco, deciding he would rather get a job in the high-tech world despite having “absolutely no experience.” He now works as an Internet consultant and has started his own company, Sunshine Daydream, based on an outdoor- adventure Web site he created.
