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Geek Eye for the Average Guy
Yxes writes "Fortune designed an experiment: give three geeks US$15,000 and three days to bring a family of four up to date with technology. The average family doesn't know which DVD player to buy or how to setup a wireless network. What happens when even the geeks can't get it to work?"
Where do I sign up to (pretend to be) technically illiterate, so I can get this kind of electronics budget? The sad thing is that these days I probably wouldn't be pretending, I've been so broke lately. I have no idea what is cutting edge on anything.
-1, "1337" speak
The $15K money would be a nice change, but I'm always spending my free time setting up WiFi home networks, etc.
The same problem would exist for both the "Geek Eye" and it's original "Queer Eye"... given a few months without supervision and the recipient will revert back into low-tech chaos. Maintenance is much harder than configuration.
Murray Todd Williams
From the article, "really, all they wanted to do was send digital pictures of the kids to Grandma. Heistad came back with a shopping list that would get them that, plus a home theater, a wireless network, new computing, a tricked-out music system, and GPS positioning capabilities."
Pathetic. How about a 6 month followup (honestly reported)? After all, what are the odds that most of this equipment will just be gathering dust by then?
Alright, probably not the Tivo... but still...
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
They're supposedly technologically illiterate. I somehow doubt it'd be 'switching over' so much as 'learning to type from scratch'. Might as well give them the typing skills that will confuse the heck out of them when they sit down in front of good ol' QWERTY at any other computer. ;)
FORTUNE's requirements: The products needed to be practical, easy to use, fully installed, basically idiot-proof, and very, very cool. I'm sorry, but did you recommend Linux? I don't think that meets any of the above requirements for the typical home user. ;)
The main problems here are compatability and demand. First, demand... The people don't need it. So, they won't use it. That's easy. The people in this article were all wrong for this stuff. They will NEVER use 20% of it.
Second, compatability. We all know and it is obvious to most people that this stuff all becomes 10 times cooler when it works with other stuff. When I buy a new X, it would be totally awesome if it will integrate with my Q, R, S, and V. Well, open standards certainly won't make much money for the manufacturers, so they don't work very well together. Heck, even all my Sony stuff has problems playing nice together. And especially the really cool features will never integrate.
Last, but not least, they kids are gonna ruin it all anyway. So to hell with it. Read a book. Take the $15,000 and put it in the kids' college funds.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Now that being geeky is seen a cool trait, marketers are now buslily redefining the label to describe people that spend lots of money on high-fashion electronics.
Why are we letting this happen? Which is more impressive: owning a lot of expensive hardware, or turning outdated junk into useful tools?
--
Long-term effects of Bush deficits
The idea as a whole is intriguing, but with posers instead of real geeks, it's pretty pointless.
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
If you can't do it in 3 days, it's not suitable for the average user anyway.
Sounds like the same concept as "Queer Eye" - getting some slob laid.
GL
No kidding. Not only that, but ever tried to suggest to a non-technical person that they get something high-tech? I made that mistake. I told my grandfather to get my grandmother a TiVo. All I can say is: let me just die in peace. Giving an "average" person all the high tech toys is not always the best thing to do, they can't understand them usually it seems! I suppose if I were a paid technical consultant it might not be quite as bad, but when it comes to recommending new technology to non tech people, I recommend the SIMPLEST, least-featured items, because it is guaranteed they will have me over for a half an hour for each feature, trying to teach them. And my patience is not that good, sorry to say. I love technology, I hate teaching technology when I keep hearing, "You are going to have to slow down, you keep going too fast" when I am trying to lay things out as sllllloooowwwwllllyyy as possible.
40g iPod
"Day Two The now fully assembled geek team pulls up to the Burkes' house at 9 a.m. " No real geek, given $15K to play with for 3 days, is going home/hotel to sleep!! Who are they trying to kid??? -k
Your mind moves quicker than a nun's first curry. - A. Rimmer
No self-respecting geek watches Enterprise.
What happens when even the geeks can't get it work?
It'd certainly explain why four out of every ten IT guys are unemployeed.
This is why, in my ideal world, in a few months we'd see some restrospective "Queer Eye" shows and a follow-up article doing a sort of "where are they now" that details all of the stuff that's fallen by the wayside and/or been destroyed by small children as compared to the geek-toys that are still in use. I have to agree with other posters here, once you've got your plasma TV and Tivo, I seriously doubt you're going to revert on purpose.
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
Throw money at the problem.
Don't think long term. Remain fixated on the short-term.
I've taught basic Internet and computer skills classes to a wide variety of people, all over the US. In doing so I've found that the only way to really make something stick is to actually sit them in front of the computer and have them learn by doing. The "three geeks and $15k" method is like a Microsoft Windows wizard. It may help you with the problem at hand, but it's not revealing anything about the hows and whys behind the problem.
In short, the end user isn't learning. They're still beholden to the geeks, because as soon as the carefully orchestrated setup hits a snafu, Abbie Normal won't know how to fix that problem.
Immersive, hands-on teaching works. It takes time and patience. Unfortunately neither are in ample supply these days, so everyone keeps on looking for silver bullet "solutions". This attitude is everywhere, even in large corporations, where managers want the latest shiny packaged product, because they actually believe that they can get results without having to learn anything first.
The computer industry is a victim of its own hype. Or rather, society is a victim of the industry hype. If we actually acknowledged the value of learning, we might collectively be able to harness the power of computers instead of spending huge chunks of time dealing with trivial annoyances.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Ahh...and the remotes. This is the kind of stuff that has ALWAYS needed a lot of work. Check out this Cooper article on an elegant solution.
Yeah, that's half of the problem, most geeks spend more time tinkering with and configuring their machines than actually using them.
- Trance sounds better on an expensive audio system
- Anime and The Matrix sure look better on a 90" plasma HDTV
- GPS is very helpful if you're planning to go to that hacker convention three cities away
- Computer and console games like Tetris will bring you hours of joy
See what I mean ? I just rearranged your list a bit, and now it sounds a lot better, doesn't it ? So what's the conclusion: only geeks deserve the latest tech gadgets ?No. The conclusion is that you shouldn't be so arrogant as to assume that you're the final arbiter of what kind of toys other people deserve. If I want to watch Friends and listen to Celine Dion, you bet your ass I want to be able to enjoy it full-size, full-color, with high dynamic range. It's not your place to stop me.
>|<*:=
Raah, I can't bear this... I've just re-installed my Gentoo Laptop this week-end and it took me only 7 hours to get a full GNOME 2.4.0 desktop up and running from stage 3.
(Of course I protected myself of the evil QT/KDE dependencies...)
This is a message for the Gentoo Advocacy movement.
Real geek don't put the www in front of slashdot.
They did buy a Powerbook and Airport base station - which they designated for use in reading email!! Then they bought a $699 Best Buy PC to handle the tasks of camera mounting and digital video editing. Madness!!
/. - where is the post from them outlining more detail?
They should have gone one way or the other (I'd have gone Mac myself), but introducing a mixed system to non-tech people is not a good plan. They basically demonstrated no degree of ability to interconnect systems, where all the REALLY cool features you could have nowadays come from.
The interesting thing to me is that these guys, being geeks, must read
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The article states that they used a Linksys Wireless Ethernet Bridge to connect the PC to the DSL connection?? They also bought an Airport Base Station. Why not just buy a Linksys WRT54G and use it to connect both the PC and Powerbook. Seems like these geeks might need to go back to geek school.
How does this help anyone? What I think would make this cool would be to form it more into This Old House, or Trading Spaces. Take the tech guys, move into the house and actually do what they need. maybe make a show on how to properly network your house. Here's an idea to fit the needs that the AVERAGE family needs.
I mean they get this fancy music system. screw that, take the money and give them a normal cd player. Chances are they can actually use it.
Give them DSL, can they afford it? is sending email instantly really that important to someone who can't figure out how to program a VCR?
Buy them a new computer... once something breaks their going to be calling tech support having the conversation: "Can you open Internet Explorer please?" "ok... now internet explorer... what is that... I don't think i have it, i'm on 2000XPME." (acutal response i've recieved lately)
If you can get along without downloading the newest strongbad email within 5 seconds, or God forbid having to get out of bed to check your email, WHY DO YOU NEED IT NOW?
I'm all for getting new high tech toys, but if a tech guy has a hard time figuring it out to get it set up, what happens when it breaks?
I consider my parents to be relatively average with technical things, they put their computer togeather without help, but when it come to trading in 5 remotes for one, the concept of pushing the TV button before controlling the TV is sometimes hard to grasp. Some people are better off keeping the 5 remotes knowing the Black on means TV, the White one means VCR and the Grey one means DVD player.
As a geek who has set up AV and computer systems for 'average' family members, I've found that getting the thing working is by far the easy part.
It's when you say goodbye and leave the house that the problems start happining. Computer drivers become muddled. Wifi networks magically stop connecting. Stereo settings become off.
And you end up dreding answering your phone because you're going to have to do tech support.
To the average person, keeping a hi tech setup in good working order is difficult. (My stereo doesn't work. After hours of troubleshooting over the phone, you discover it's because they hit the 'a' speaker button while cleaning the recevier).
Keeping a computer system in top condition is even harder. "Of course I clicked on that attachment. It said it was from microsoft and it would clean the virus out of my computer".
The Internet is generally stupid
The qualifications of these "geeks" seems questionable. It sounds more like they had typical executives from technology companies (an IT executive at Time Inc., A former CTO, and an audio store owner) calling shots in their standard fashion:
1. Buy expensive things based on the brochures,
2. Yell when the standard lack any due diligence or research left them in a jam,
3. Demand a bonus for staying on the sinking ship! / Get the geeks to come up with a workable interim kludge. -- omitted
However, in this case, they didn't have actual geeks to pick up any slack. And, they also were forced to omit their core competency of writing memos "We are excited to announce the strategic alliance with $VENDOR! We will be rolling out $BROKEN_PRODUCT beginning next month!"