The Widening Tech-Savvy Gap

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. It's hard to recall any industry which has so abused, neglected and exploited its customers and survived. But it is interesting to track -- as a brand-new survey does -- just how wide the gap is, and how differently Americans cope with it, by age, ethnicity and geography. Why, for example, would midwesterners grasp technology so much better than northeasterners? We are still, at heart, a fix-it country, given the chance, something much of the tech world seems to have forgotten.

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.

Comments

Less is more.

[DeadBugs]

"Why, for example, would midwesterners grasp technology so much better than northeasterners?"

We drink less coffee and more beer. It allows for paitence

Duh!

[jpaulson]

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.

Well no shit. The TV has ~5 options (power on/off, channel up, channel down, volume up, volume down) as compared to the computer which is designed to be versitile and has more options than I can enumerate. You increase an objects complexity and fewer people understand it. Why is this even worth mentioning?

Silly article based on an opinion poll

[cowboy junkie]

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?'

Let's examine this a bit shall we?

[AstynaxX]

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.

contradictions a la Katz

[garyrich]

"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.

Re:I hope the gap is as wide as possible.

[dcweaver]

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.

There's a reason for that.

[SCHecklerX]

Instead of learning how to use a computer or device, these days, it's all being hidden from the end users. I remember my first computer, the TRS-80 color computer, came with a book on how to PROGRAM it. Same goes for electronics. It used to be you could buy a kit, build something yourself, and learn something in the process. Today you just buy something.

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.

Did it ever occur to you Mr. Katz?

[TheAwfulTruth]

That as people grow older they want to put up with constantly changing technology less and less? And it doesn't matter if it's cell phones in this century or automobiles in the last. Eventually technology always passes by a persons WANT to keep up with it.

Comparing TVs to the internet is also completely meaningless. TVs require virtually NO internevtion to operate it's by it's nature a passive activity. The net by it's nature is an active activity. A person does not choose one BECAUSE of the other. They choose one because of what they WANT out of it. Even if you had a computer that was 100% functional without flaws all the time, getting anything out of the net reqires one to pay more attention. It's work. Hell even 100 channels of TV are too much for some people to want to wade through.

And I'm not talking about ignorance or stupidity. I'm talking about WANT. Some people don't WANT to deal with technology on any level no matter how flawless or "easy" you make it.

YOU'RE the one whos elitest. This entire article is one giant freudian slip! You actually think that everyone on the planet HAS to be completely up to date with the latest and greatest. That's bullshit and that's your elitism showing.

This article says loads more about yourself than any other point you tried to being up.

it's not just the tech industry

[CrudPuppy]

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*.

Both sides of the spectrum are full of crap.

[quag7]

Having worked in retail selling PCs and then having worked for a large ISP doing tech support and writing technical support content, my opinion of the matter, whatever it is worth, is that no one has realized the basic fact that support works only when both sides meet at the middle.

First of all, companies spend too much on supporting the least profitable customers. There are, unfortunately, some people who are just too stupid to use certain technologies. That may not fit in with the idealism of the present age, but it is a fact. At the same time, savvy users are often denied the online resources / self help data which is cheap to provide. No one should ever have to dig, for example, for IP, DNS, etc. setttings for their ISP. The ISP I use doesn't have a single page written with the basic numbers that I need to configure a PC, but they'll spend countless hours writing "How to use e-mail" documents and supporting users who delete their WINNT directory "because they're using Windows 2000."

Learning to use technology requires the affirmative and volitional use of brainpower. The worst disservice you can do to support a person is to tell them what keys to press, and in what order, without telling them why. This may be a short term fix to get a customer off of the phones, but it results in countless followup calls which make hold times longer, support more expensive, and therefore services for expensive. A little user education goes a long way. Consumers should be expected to open up their minds and learn about the technologies they use. If a 3 year old can use a PC - and many, many do, there is no reason why a full-grown person cannot spend a little time in the evenings educating themselves in whatever way they are most comfortable with.

"I don't have the time." What this means is, the individual would rather watch Survivor than spend 30 minutes in their evenings learning a little bit about the technology they use. Well, that's *their* problem. In the end, the decreased productivity they experience, all of the time saving measures they cannot avail themselves of, etc. far exceeds the simple initial investment of RTFM. How often I've watched people in my own office lay out little bulletins and brochures using scotch tape and scissors when they could have done it in a fraction of the time using only the most basic functions of Word. It's not as if you have to be a computer geek, just a reasonably educated computer user. Anyone who has ever put the time in ought to know that the investment pays off, frees up time, money, and resources.

Paranoia about support boundaries. Several companies I've worked for have paranoia about supporting products beyond the most rudimentary tasks. An example of this is setting up a Linux system to work with an ISP. Write the damn documentation, put it online, and then put a disclaimer on it saying, "Use this information at your own risk. We don't support it and are not responsible for anything that happens to you including spontaneous combustion if it all goes awry." Whatever the company's legal department is happy with. Some companies do this now and it makes life easier and saves a phone call, which costs companies so much money.

So much time has been spent catering to the user's ignorance that consumers are not expected to take some effort to learn about the products they buy. Every time something is dumbed down to the point a monkey can use it, inevitably two things happen:

• Power is or may be diminished in the product (Windows is one example).
• An expectation is set, and now every company which comes later must spend the support resources necessary to support people who won't crack open a manual.

Ideally, ample online/self-help resources ought to be provided by every company that manufactures a product, because it is cheap; in fact it costs almost nothing. You spend the time hiring some technical writers or knowledge engineers to put together a knowledge base or support web, then just have a few maintainers on. Agents can then use this information for support, and so forth. This is infinitely cheaper than doing phone support.

Then, there ought to be tiered pricing for support, depending on the issue. Phone support ought not necessarily be free. People who expect companies to bend over backwards for them have no conception of revenue models. Support is *expensive*. There is no reason, for example, a company should be forced to support someone who will not crack open a manual. What this does is drive up wait times, resulting either in customer dissatisfaction, or the company has to hire more tech support people, which costs money, cuts into profits, resulting in the expense being passed onto the consumer.

But consumers want everything dirt cheap. That's Capitalism. What they don't want is the very basic reality that you get what you pay for. Take low-margin industries like PC retail. Sure you can buy a bargain basement clone with who-knows-what in it, but somehow when it works like crap, the indignant dissastisfied-customer attitude doesn't impress me. Support and quality ought to come at a premium. If customers didn't buy technology like they buy clothes pins, like "they're all the same," maybe they wouldn't be bitten so hard by poor support and low quality.

Inevitably every customer I've dealt with has some "10 year old whiz kid" in the family who *thinks* he knows everything about computers. Occasionally this is the case, but more often my experience has been that for some perverse reason it has become *fashionable* to be a computer nerd, and so a lot of people who know how to mouse around in Windows call themselves experts for the supposed status it brings (I went to school in the 1980s and the opposite could not have been more true). All technology is not build the same. All companies are not built the same. Sometimes, yeah, you get what you pay for. Deal with it.

Learn to read manuals and use the library and especially online resources. Or else get someone to teach you. Or pay for the support that you require that so few others, who have the ability to learn on their own, do.

I had no one to teach me about computers or technology, or how to work my VCR. I had to sit down and learn it, and it didn't take up all of my free time; I didn't have to dedicate my life to figure out how to stop the damn blinking 12:00 on my VCR. It took 5 minutes. 5 minutes people are not willing to spend. And in 90% of the cases not because they are working 24/7 and don't have a single second to figure it out, but because they are lazy and would rather indulge themselves in whatever banalities pass for entertainment in the world these days. I am not sympathetic. There are so many resources available to people, and the time required to learn the basics of anything so considerably small compared to the time-saving benefits and payoffs, that I don't see why I should care about this gap.

Somewhere in America there is an idiot whining about the fact that he has to learn to cursor around the menu system on his VCR, while an 8 year old is installing FreeBSD in his free time.

Welcome to the 2000s. This is life. I wonder if people whined about having to learn to read following the invention of the printing press and the onset of the Enlightenment, and eventually the industrial revolution.

Carry your own weight, or get out of the road, maggots.