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The Widening Tech-Savvy Gap
When things malfunction, the vast majority of Americans try to fix it themselves. (And no wonder. Tech Support is synonymous with anxiety and indifference). Almost half -- 47 percent -- say the first thing they do when a piece of equipment fails is try to repair it. Another 21 percent have a friend or family member look at it. Only nine percent take a broken purchase back to the place where they bought it. Then there are the 3 percent of Americans who say that when something breaks, they simply buy a new something. This last group may be rich, but it's also smart; its members are most likely tech veterans who've spend years struggling with customer service, poring through complex warranties, waiting on hold for support and assistance, an oxymoron if ever there was one.
The survey of nearly 3000 adults, commissioned by American Demographics magazine and published in its March issue, reveals other intriguing details. Though fewer than half of Americans with computers say they fully understand how to operate them and all their features, there are differences by region. Northeasterners are the most confused, Midwesterners the most computer-confident. When attempting to learn their way around a new purchase, 89 percent consult instruction manuals, poor saps.
Adults under 35 are, not surprisingly, more skilled at confronting tech problems. For example, 77 per cent of those surveyed age 18 to 34 are confident in their ability to operate their VCR, while 54 per cent of adults older than 35 said the same. Young adults are also more proficient, says the survey, when it comes to using cell phones, stereos, remote controls, microwaves and computers. Separated, divorced and widowed Americans are more involved with high-tech than other singles and married people. This may be because they have more time, or are perhaps more focused on using tech to connect with other people.
Television, meanwhile, continues its long reign as Americans' most beloved and comprehensible technology. In fact, for years TV has not gotten its due as one of the monumentally successful technologies of all time -- cheap, reliable, easy to use. More than 80 percent of respondents across the country understood how to work a TV better than a computer, something for the computer industry to ponder long and hard.
Asian-Americans use the Net more than any other group. On any given day, says American Demographics, more than half of all English-speaking Asians (53 percent) go online, compared to a third of all English-speaking whites (33 percent) and a sixth of all English-speaking blacks (17 per cent). On the other hand, 65 percent of African-Americans say they know and understand the features of their mobile phones, compared with only 42 percent of whites and 56 percent of Hispanics. One might have predicted, though, that women are more open to reading directions than men.
The survey is significant for several reasons. It shows that responses to tech are different among different age, geographic and ethnic groups. It confirms the idea that tech industries are peopled by smart geeks still too far removed from the ordinary concerns of average Americans. It reminds us that Tech Support is a scandal. It reinforces the notion of tech elites who alone understand how the new tools of the Info Age really work, while most people struggle to use them. New tech tools from computers to cell phones may seem ubiquitous, but in fact, they are not. Tech triggers different responses in different people, depending on where they live, how old they are, and even their race and ethnic origins.
-- Jason
Katz asks 'why would midwesterners grasp technology so much better than northeasterners?', but in fact, since this is based on an opinion poll in which the respondents evaluated their own expertise, the real question would be 'why do midwesterners think they grasp technology so much better than northeasterners do?'
I don't know how many times I've heard "Just show me what I need to know; I don't want to learn all that other stuff" from any number of technophobes.
science is a religion
Katz asks why the tech industry has continued to trundle along (not entirely prosper, but mostly so) when we 'abuse' our users. Tell me, would he ask the same uestion about a gap between the 'medically savvy' and the 'medically confused'? Modern computer systems (and by systems I mean -everything, hardware and software) are very nearly as complex as biological organisms (at least as we currently understand them. The more we learn about biology, the more there seems to be, but that's another topic). Is it -really- hard to figure out why most folks aren't computer experts?
Let me spell it out then: The problem is too complex for most people to bother spending the required amount of time to learn its answer. Just like medicine, some of the more esoteric bits of automobiles, and other inherently complex topics.
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
I've got more disposable income now than I ever had before...but I've PURCHASED all of the consumer techno-gadgets to be had. I last felt that 'smell of the hunt' feeling when I bought a RUG Shampooer fer chrissakes.
It puts me in a serious funk to walk into Circuit City/Best Buy/Soundtrack and realise that there ARE NO consumer electronics left for me to purchase. My pda's perking along fine, as is my cellphone, Digital Camera, computer, Xbox, home theatre, TV, blender, coffee maker, LAN, lawnmower, car lift, electric toothbrush...you get the point.
At the same time that I've got everything I want, I've got a ton of functionality I don't use. I've got an X10 touchpanel that's programmable, interrupt driven, and can literally control everything in my house. It's technically not beyond my abilities to program it. Why does it only turn on and off the Stereo tuner and control it's volume? Because I can't be _bothered_ to figure it out.
That may be the more telling issure here: Are these people stupid, or is it just not a high enough priority to learn? (OR do us midwesterners just have more dark cold winter to futz with stuff?)
Hey, my phone's a two way pager...it can surf the net, it's got an IR port to connect my pda to the internet. How many people CARE that it does more than 'look cool' and doesn't drop calls?
We've gotten to the point where more features can be crammed into a device than can be used. It it bad that I don't use EVERY feature?
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
The only way that anyone from a vending machine cleaner to a managing director stays current is through re-training. Re-training doesn't always mean college or university, often people don't pop to their local library and pick up a 'Windows for Dummies' or even learn the basics of what a computer actually is. I'm not saying that there are not mitigating factors and I'm not saying that there isn't an excuse. But the fact is from the industrial revolution to today people have had to shift skill sets and move with the market.
It's the nature of things, one door closes and another opens. My 83 year old grandmother has learnt how to email and use the net so its possible up to a quite considerable age. Who is the oldest computer/internet/slashdot user?
e4 e5
"Why, for example, would midwesterners grasp technology so much better than northeasterners?"
It doesn't even seem to say that. It says that midwesterners are more CONFIDENT in their abilities with technologies. Their confidence may be totally unfounded.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Take a load of not so bright people ask them to evaluate themselves
Take a load of brigh people ask them to evaluate themselves.
The average rating for the not so bright will be from above average to excellent
The average rating for the bright people will be from average to above average
Put them together in a room to talk about the ratings...
Not so bright group don't change their opinions, bright group now average Excellent.
A common study on perception on reality that most psyhc students have looked at.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
This seems to me to be a modern trend in business. Businesses in all sectors have discovered that you don't have to be good or provide a good product or service, you just have to be good enough. In fact it seems that businesses can maximize profits by being subpar. Consumers will often buy a cheap product that does 90% of what they want rather than an expensive product that does 100%.
This seems to be especially true with customer service. Providing the level of customer service to help the average user (oh, I have to plug it in?) and not providing the level of service desired by the "tech savvy" saves a lot of money for these companies.
It comes down to cheap, fast, good, chose any two. The population typcially goes for cheap and fast, and not good.
The Economics of Website Security
Keep in mind that the first person to successfully teach computer stuff to Joe Blow will likely make a giant amount of money. So this is a classic instance of the Prisoner's Dilemma, where the reward for defecting (i.e., giving our skills to the common man) is much greater than for cooperating and keeping computer knowledge secret. I would submit that we can't keep the gap wide by simply not teaching our skills to anyone.
However, I would also submit that the gap will always be widening, even if we try to stop it. Many people look at computer software that is designed to "dumb down" the machine for the average user, and say that computers are getting simpler every day. Really, of course, this simplicity is only a sandbox, and the back end is getting more and more complex. This, not a conspiracy of technocrats, is what will keep computer gurus in their jobs. Not to worry.
They are almost exclusively made by Microsoft.
It's true that the overwhelming majority of Americans prefer to fix their computers than to buy new. If I made computers I would empower users to do just that. But I'm don't and Microsoft does...
When my friends have computer problems I'm powerless to help them. How do I get rid of lurking programs that pop up advertisements? How do fix there computer if something screwed up their registry? Sometimes I am able to find help online but most of the time I'm not.
Microsoft software is fragile, undocumented, unpredictable and unfixable. It's not just end users who are frustrated using Microsoft products; techincal people get frustrated and angry too.
Can't think of a group of people who care less about their customers ?
Tobacco and Gun companies, lob in the Defence industry, lawyers etc etc etc.
What a troll. Though I'm not going to try to defend the tobacco companies here, the gun, defense and legal industries do not set out specifically to harm their customers.
This is flawed logic at it's worst. Are you telling me the defense industry doesn't care about the American people? That's it whole fucking purpose, is to defend morons like you.
Leaving the decisions of politcal leaders out of it, without Colt firearms and Beoing bomber aircraft, you'd be tossing Hitlers salad along with everybody else. Every war or military action may not be justified, but there are certainly times when they are.
Also, although society has become a bit litigious, don't forgot those downtrodden defense lawyers who got your sorry ass Miranda rights. Lawyers for big companies do try to take away alot of rights from people, but other lawyers got you a lot of rights to begin with. It's a give and take... good and bad.
Anyways, you're allowed to be a dirty hippie pinko if you want, but I'm still gonna eat steak, smoke Marlboros, drink Jack Daniels, own a Glock, and live in a troubled but still free fucking country.
One of my favorite examples of a poor grasp of technology was observed when I was in a cell phone store. The sales guy was setting up an account for me when this lady walks in. She told the guy her phone wasn't working, and she thought it was because she had left it on the dashboard in the sun (not a totally unreasonable idea). The guy looks at the phone and pushes the power button. When the phone comes on, the lady is quite surprised and asks how he did it. He then explains to her all about the power button, and how it works. She was surprised and hadn't realized that you could turn the phone on and off. Apparently, she had let the battery fully discharge and then when she plugged it in and charged it up, it didn't turn on automatically and she didn't know what to do.
It's funny how people's brains seem to turn off when they get near something high-tech, or really even something unfamiliar (e.g. people are constantly confused as to where they parked at ski resorts, yet they have no problems finding their parking spot at the mall/stadium/wherever).
..The gap between the tech-savvy and the techno-confused keeps growing, a monumental failure of our arrogant and elitist tech industries. It's hard to recall any industry which has so abused, neglected and exploited its customers and survived.
Open Source software is often lambasted for being harder to use than its proprietary Windows equivalents. On the other hand, it simultaneously has far better user support available. Proprietary software, being a product-based industry, cares more about shipping out new products than it does supporting what already exists. This comes naturally with the business model. They don't make money on support so it's very tempting to slack off. Open Source based business, in contrast, is purely a service industry. By very nature it results in far closer communication between users and developers. Open Source breaks down arrogance and elitism quickly as the development community expands. A customer cannot be neglected if it is also a co-developer. As the use of OSS continues to spread and more consulting firms spring up to meet the service need, I believe we'll see a flourishing of consumer friendly technology both on and off the desktop PC.
You can't simply blame the users for not knowing how things work. You also have to blame the people creating the technology for not encouraging them to understand the stuff in the first place (M$ constantly trying to hide the file system from users is a good example of this). Any piece of equipment that could be tweaked, configured, or modified SHOULD come with books on how to do so.
Another excellent example that just sprang to mind is printers. When I purchased my first printer (A radio shack dmp130 dot matrix) it came with a book describing EXACTLY how to talk to it to use fonts, or address graphics. In other words, everything needed to write a printer driver (not really such a thing back then, but) came with the printer. You simply don't see these manuals and specs being shipped with modern day stuff, so even those who are curious about things don't have their curiosity encouraged by the manufacturers.
A lot of the blame here seems to be aimed at the tech. industry.... People seem to think that the tech. industry isn't doing enough to explain things to your average user, or make them simple enough, or produce products that fit the average user's needs. Well, I'll certainly agree that this is all true to a certain degree, but I don't think that is where the majority of the problem lies. The majority of the problem lies not with the tech. industry for failing to educate the masses, but with the masses for failing to do anything to educate themselves.
I work at the local EB, and you'd be amazed at some of the customers we have in here. There are people who know absolutely nothing about the computer that they just purchased - don't know the RAM, speed, HDD space, nothing! This is on a machine that was just purchased a day ago...and all that information is available right on the box! Most people, when they go out to purchase a car, take a look at some basic information...type of transmission, MPG, airbags, ABS, number of seats...you get the idea. Most people (from what I've seen at EB) do not do the same thing with technology.
How much can you expect the tech. industry to educate/provide for the masses when they're not even willing to read the label on a package?
yrs,
Ephemeriis
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
I agree with you 100%. Usually I find at least a couple nuggets of "good stuff" in what Jon writes, but I feel he's way off the mark on this one.
It's hard to recall any industry which has so abused, neglected and exploited its customers and survived.
This problem is hardly attributable to the Tech industry alone. The problem is one common to most companies today. Any kind of customer support is lousy. It's an afterthought. Look at the amount of money companies spend on sales vs what they allocate to keeping the customer happy. It's pretty clear that if companies weren't forced to offer some kind of support in order to sell their products, they wouldn't bother.
Jon also describes TV as the one technology that almost everybody seems to be able to use, and then compares that to people's comfort level with newer technologies. Duh. An overwhelming majority of today's population grew up with TV. I don't have numbers to argue with, but I suspect the trend is that the longer technology is in society, the more understood and accepted it is. And if you grew up with something, you're more likely to be comfortable using it than somebody who didn't grow up with it.
Despite the proliferation of tech toys and work devices in people's lives, the gap between the tech-savvy and the techno-confused keeps growing, a monumental failure of our arrogant and elitist tech industries.
This is just pure hogwash. There are plenty of self-study materials available, not to mention adult education courses. The big problem is that as adults, we don't have time to spend learning these things. We're too busy doing a job that will ultimately be obsolete. The reason that gap keeps widening is because technology keeps advancing. Today's youth is fully immersed in all of the latest technology. They have the time to play with and learn all of the new stuff. For crying out loud, they even study it in school. Older adults, on the other hand, have spent the last thirty-some years of their life raising their children and working to put food on the table. They get about an hour of free time per evening. And guess where they'd rather be spending it? In front of the TV. They haven't had the gobs of time to spend on learning technology. Most likely, they weren't using new technology at work, so it's not likely that the knowledge to use it is just going to pop itself into their heads.
Young adults are also more proficient, says the survey, when it comes to using cell phones, stereos, remote controls, microwaves and computers.
These are all things that young adults have grown up with. Why would their proficiency be so surprising?
Separated, divorced and widowed Americans are more involved with high-tech than other singles and married people. This may be because they have more time, or are perhaps more focused on using tech to connect with other people.
This just goes to prove what I was saying. The time factor. I'd like to see the study narrow down a bit to take into account the "child" factor. My guess is that single people with children fared far worse in the study because they have even less time than a married person to spend with technology, unless they use it at work.
It confirms the idea that tech industries are peopled by smart geeks still too far removed from the ordinary concerns of average Americans.
I'd like to see the survey. Did anybody find a reference to it on the link Jon provided? I really want to see where he pulls this idea from. Sure, technology is developed by the "smart" people. But don't forget that product development, marketing and sales aren't made up of the same breed of people. They are smart in their own ways, but not normally as technology savvy.
It reminds us that Tech Support is a scandal.
I agree with this, but as I said before, this applies to other customer service areas, too. Did you ever have a problem with a vacuum cleaner and try calling their support line? It's every bit as bad as a Tech support line. And they pull the same crap, like charging more to fix a simple problem than it would cost to just buy a new vacuum cleaner.
I'm sorry, but I don't think this survey was very well thought out. Maybe it's just Jon's take on it, but it appears that the survey was written specifically to support a theory. I'm sure there are some interesting things in there. For example, the ethnic differences are interesting. One might wonder, for example, what the family background of different ethnic groups are. For example, how many generations in the US. What their education levels are. What their family is interested in. Whether they have relatives in other countries that they still need to communicate with.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
I disagree with mostly all of it but whatever. Surveying 3000 adults for a study like this isn't enough. A more comprehensive study needs to be done. For instance, I'm African-American, Black or whatever the fucking PC term is. I'm 22 and tend to think I know a little about computers at least enough to not be totally ignorant. That said blackplanet.com has a shit load of African-American's online every single day. I've never seen it go under the 20,000 mark and mind you this is just one website. I don't use it everyday or even every month but everytime I do go there (maybe every 2 months) there is always a large number of people on. As for others i'd be hard pressed to know anything but from my view of the world conducting a study/survey like this tends to be futile. Technology is just the modern day equivalent of the cavemans sharpened rock for an axe. They are just tools, except these aren't for survival; better communication, yes. Some will know how to use them and others won't. However if a study/survey is to be done 3,000 people isn't enough, if you could get at least 5,000 from every state you'd probably get better numbers.
Ok lemme stop rambling.
forget about VCR's and digital cameras, the tech gap is EVERYWHERE!
I believe one of the most fundamental differences between a tech-savvy person and a non-techie (all other things being equal) is that at the core the tech-savvy person isn't afraid of the technology.
Put a 10 year-old in front of a computer and watch them go wild, trying everything out, then put a 50 year-old in front of the same computer and marvel at their fear of breaking the thing by pressing a mouse button.
To address the gap specifically, look at cars. 30 years ago, new cars could all be worked on by most auto-savvy people. now we look around and find that there are more than a couple makers that won't allow you to turn off the check-engine light until you come in for your $5000 dealer oil change (exageration intended).
Most people accept this because cars of today have engines half the size producing twice the power and a fraction of the emissions as those from 30 years ago. It's a compromise.
Now let's apply this to the computer industry, and we can see the parallel is indeed there. The compromise lies in the fact that computers today can do quiteliterally THOUSANDS of things the Apple II could not. 40 years ago, it truly was possible for someone with motivation to be a master in the realm of computing -- now a person considers himself lucky to truly master one tiny specialised field in 5 years.
It's not abusing the consumer, it's giving people more of what they want at the expense of them not understanding *everything*.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.