Skip to main content

97-year-old Olive Horrell blown away by visit to Google’s campus

google garden
Ashstar01/Wikipedia
She said she wanted to see the future, and she got the next best thing — a visit to Google’s headquarters. In what may be the most endearing footage captured in 2015, 97-year-old great-grandmother Olive Horrell took a trip to Google’s Mountain View campus as part of the Wish of a Lifetime initiative. And during her VIP tour of the tech giant’s office — the home of some of the most cutting edge technology — Horrell found that in just under a century, the world has undergone some major changes.

'Wish of a Lifetime' Granted for 97-Yr-Old

Growing up in the first half of the 20th century, “We had no electricity, no radio, horse and buggy,” Horrell told CNET‘s Lexy Savvides. The first computer she ever saw was three feet by three feet and made use of punch cards. So when she donned a Google Cardboard for the first time, to say that she was blown away actually seems like something of an understatement. “There’s no way I can understand that,” she said after taking a virtual reality tour. “The horse. I was so sure I could touch the horse.”

Horrell has lived through the Great Depression, seen 17 presidents come and go, and experienced firsthand the breakneck rapidity of 21st century innovation. Even so, “Certainly in my wildest dreams, I couldn’t conceive of what I saw today,” she said of her visit. During her day-long excursion, which sounds an awful lot like the tech version of a visit to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, Horrell met the Google Doodle team, took a ride in a self-driving car, and watched Translate, Cardboard, Photos, and Liftware Teams give her exclusive demos of products that may not even be in the public market yet.

During her Photos demonstration, Horrell was amazed by Google’s face-detection software, saying, “Push a button and you have history right in front of you. This is very mind-boggling for me.”

Mind-boggling as it may be, Horrell is by no means out of touch with the tech world. As a child, the great-grandmother was interested in engineering, but was ultimately discouraged from pursuing a career in the field by her father. But today, she’s as tech savvy as they come, reading books on her Kindle, sending emails from a laptop, and even calling Apple Support for the occasional question.

“I’m intrigued with the changes I’ve seen in my life,” said Horrell told the Associated Press of her visit.  “It’s a real learning experience for me today … Life has got to be fun.”

Editors' Recommendations

Lulu Chang
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
Is 2020 going to be a make-or-break year for Google hardware?
google pop up stores 2018 hardware 32

This was a busy year for Google’s Rick Osterloh-led hardware wing. In addition to introducing a string of new products, the division continued its expansion spree by ratcheting up its head count even further. After bringing on board about 2,000 engineers from HTC’s smartphone design team and merging Nest with the Google Home department in 2018, the company acquired Fitbit (as well as its workforce) for $2.1 billion this year and paid watchmaker Fossil $40 million to buy a piece of its wearable tech and bring on an unspecified number of researchers.

It may seem like Google’s hardware arm is all set for prime time, but its 2019 efforts and announcements signaled anything but. In spite of some of them being several generations old, nearly each one of Google’s lineups faltered and struggled to make mark. The numbers reflected that as the company lost significant ground in a handful of markets, setting up 2020 as a potential make-or-break year for Google’s hardware division.

Read more
Google fixes Nest camera bug that allowed old owners to still see through them
The Nest Cam IQ in a home.

Google has fixed an alarming bug in the Nest Cam Indoor security system that allowed previous owners to still access images from the device, despite performing a factory reset.

The discovery, which was first reported by Wirecutter, was made by a member of the Facebook Wink Users Group. Wink is a platform of of both hardware and software that connects with and controls smart home devices.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more