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?"

Comments

What's new? I'm always doing this for friends.

[MurrayTodd]

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.

Re:What's new? I'm always doing this for friends.

[Lawbeefaroni]

It's a lot easier to revert back to old jeans and picking your nose than it is to ignore a 42" plasma screen and a 7.1 surround system.

Maybe they'll go back to doing grocery lists on paper instead of Grocer XP 2.0 but they won't give up Tivo.

A waste of $15,000

[rjstanford]

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...

Re:Some things for most people:

[Throtex]

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. ;)

Typical problems

[moehoward]

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 that's geeky, then you can have it.

[waxmop]

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?

It's a sham

[Eponymous Cowboy]

From the article:

On the way out they pick up a MAG Innovision 17-inch CRT monitor for a hundred bucks, hop in the Chevy Malibu rental, and floor it back to the Burkes'.

I, too, had a 17" MAG CRT monitor--in 1990. These so called "geeks" should be able to do a heck of a lot better than a 17" CRT if their goal is to bring the family "up to date." I lost all faith in them after reading that. As far as I can tell, they did nothing more than buy whatever was on page two of the Best Buy circular that week.

The idea as a whole is intriguing, but with posers instead of real geeks, it's pretty pointless.

Imposters!!!!!!

[Kruid]

"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

Short-sighted approach

[Infonaut]

Do it as fast as possible.

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.

Utter failure.

[sahala]

The 3 geeks were setting up stuff that they themselves would enjoy. They didn't focus on what the family really desired, nor did any analysis of any real goals. That's not to say that other "improvement" shows do any better...most of them overlook this obvious, but important, step in the process.

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.

Re:Requirements?

[msgmonkey]

Yeah, that's half of the problem, most geeks spend more time tinkering with and configuring their machines than actually using them.

Re:why it doesn't work

[Bugmaster]

Technology is like a knife. It's not inherently good or bad; it all depends on how you wield it.

• 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.

They were almost there.

[SuperKendall]

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!!

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 /. - where is the post from them outlining more detail?

Setting up is not really the problem

[interstellar_donkey]

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".