Recently, before going abroad for three months, my father asked me for the Irish Times website address. Coming from a man who has never used a mobile phone and doesn't carry a credit card, this seemed like the great leap forward to embracing technology.

I was even a little bit touched. "Ah," I thought, "he wants to read my articles when he's abroad." When he started in about "following the form", however, I knew that the only reading about Ireland he'd be doing abroad concerned horses. For this, I was happy to let him know about www.ireland.com and the excellent Irish Times racing site at www.irish-racing.com.

He did say he'd send an email though, which is a start, even if he wasn't quite grasping the fact that you need an actual e-mail address from which to do so. (I think he thought he could just put my e-mail address into a web browser's address line and continue from there . . .)

My mother learned how to use e-mail on a FAS back-to-work course and now sends emails from her local library whenever she gets a chance. She likes using it.

My sister has been using email for years and, as she lives in London, finds it a very handy way of keeping in touch on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis.

One of my brothers has had e-mail for a couple of years. He doesn't use it very often, but it's there and he can.

My other brother and his wife bought a computer before Christmas and both set up email addresses straight away. The only difficulty encountered was in picking an e-mail address for him - Michael Collins being one of the most common names in Ireland. All possible permutations of that name using dashes, dots and underscores proved fruitless. All are long spoken for by the legions of other Michael Collinses.

Out of all the photos taken at my sister's wedding last August, my favourite is the one of she and me, our two brothers and four first-cousins (one of whom, aged seven, is asleep across three chairs). The reason I like it so much is because it caught us all at a very happy moment, and I wonder when we will all be together again.

For these reasons, I wanted to give a copy of it to all involved, but I didn't know all of their addresses. However, between my sister and myself, we had all their e-mail addresses (the father's e-mail in the case of the seven-year-old). So we've e-mailed the picture as a JPEG attachment to everyone. It was a simple procedure, done in seconds and it cost practically nothing. Both my sister and I have also saved it as our computer's wallpaper (see Question of the Week).

So, why am I telling you all of this about my family? Hopefully most readers will have recognised this for what it is - a hymn in praise of new technology, and e-mail in particular. E-mail is the greatest communication invention since the telephone. It can help you get in touch with friends you haven't seen in years and it can make it easier to contact family members.

In journalism, the day is fast approaching when a mobile phone and a laptop computer with an Internet connection is as important to every reporter as pen and paper.

Any parent who uses e-mail and has children working abroad or backpacking somewhere around the world will already know the value of email. A friend who has travelled extensively in South America has told me of a mountain village he came across. There were two huts there, one of which had an Internet connected computer.

If you are still wavering about whether or not to use e-mail, wondering how hard it might be, just try it. If my father is willing to learn how to use it, then anyone can.