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The Impact of Technophobes
fsharp writes "Most of us have experience with average folks requesting technical support. I have friends and family members that would be lost without my support. I opt for a sliding scale payment plan, usually dinner. At any rate, The New York Times has a nice piece on the impact of technophobes on the Internet (vis-a-vis MyDoom and other email-borne viruses) and their technologically adept friends and family."
I'm glad that so many people don't understand what I do. That makes me more valuable.
I'm coin operated baby!
[ Don't reply to this ]
I've experienced the same frustration plenty of times myself, having ushered several family members and friends on to the internet, only to be confronted by the same ridiculous ( HOW COULD YOU DO THAT?!?!?! ) behaviors.
:)
The fact of the matter is, most people treat computers like a glorified appliance. A computer should more aptly be treated like a motor vehicle; yeah, you can go have some fun in it but you'd better drive defensively and know how to operate the thing properly. You don't just take it out of the box and start pressing buttons
Can we really blame the users though? After having dealt with plenty of computer illiterates in my day, I've come to realize that advertising and computer companies are at least as responsible as the users themselves. Inasmuch as they may be advertised to be so, a computer is not "plug and play". It requires maintenance and careful attention! Computer companies have put the average consumer into a "PRES BUTAN TO INTERNET!!!" mindset, and it's a bit hard to get them out of it.
Frankly, though, I can't say that it bothers me too much. Computer illiterates are my best source of favors. You need all that spyware removed and windows reinstalled? Yeah, well I need some vodka. Of course the fact that they do a nice job of filling my inbox with crap (both viruses themselves, and spam from hijacked machines) certainly gets on my nerves, but I've got my fingers crossed waiting for the next breed of mail protocol which should solve these problems altogether.
Sometimes things just work out
It is more worth my time and money to spend $399 on the cheapo Dell PC for my dad and just have him call tech support when he needs help. Dad's not technical and my patience has worn thin for technical support of "click, double click," etc.
"So, Dad, what did Dell say when you called them? "
"I didn't call em yet"
"Okay, well, ya know we paid for that with the computer. Let's get our money's worth..."
Seems to be the best deal going for me.
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
The biggest problem is the Technolazy, people who have seen to much Star Trek, or who have been so brainwashed by the 'ctrl-alt-del' mentality, that they assume things are easy when they aren't. Driving a car, operating a VCR, or designing a website are all DIFFICULT tasks, which require attention to detail, and have strict guidelines to avoid failure.
None of this matters to the Technolazy, who stomp their feet when the "computer doesn't want to print" or when it goes "beep beep" and totally eats their very good paper. Technolazies also refuse to admit that paying for real hardware, quality software, and educated tech support is necessary - they all know someone who "kows computers". Resoning typically doesn't work, since "they heard" something from someone, and so therefore they know more than you about T1 lines, printer drivers, SCSI drives or database software.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
is that even though I barely know enough to get by a lot of the time, and really all I do is make webpages which of course anyone HERE would know doesn't have anything to do with actually operating a computer, anyone who doesn't understand the technology or can't find the power button assumes I'm some kind of 7337 hacker than can solve all their problems or tell what brand of computer they have when they say "it's one of the beige ones with a CD-ROM."
And I can't help them, I couldn't if I wanted to, and so I end up looking like a jerk to my family because I "won't" help them fix their computer and they think I'm lying about it just because I spend half my time on the internet writing plain old HTML. Now that's annoying.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
From the point of view of a non-educated user, they think clicking on the "click here to be removed from this list" link in an e-mail is what to do to in order to get less spam. They think running the patch that comes in via e-mail will protect their system. They think the deposed Nigerian leader who e-mails them really needs their help and will pay them millions...
The common bond? What you see in e-mail, particularly an e-mail from somebody you've never heard of before, cannot be taken at face value. Just because it's in an e-mail doesn't make it true.
Maybe the safest thing to do would be to set up clueless users with a whitelist-based e-mail client... if a sender is not already in the address book the message won't be displayed, with maybe a "Knock-knock, do you know this person?" box for unrecognized senders. That'd at least cut down on the number of scams...
People also don't seem to realize that there's quite a lot of breadth in the field. I'm a programmer, who uses Linux at home and has sysadmins to help me with the Windows boxes at work. People are always shocked at how little I know about the latest features in Excel and MS Word. They give me this "You're a computer professional?" look and leave feeling good that they're better with computers than I am.
Well unless you work in a hospital or nuclear facility, your lack of computer skills are not going to endanger peoples lives.
I think a driving license, and the ability to operate a computer are two huuuugely different things imho.
Though that is why they have things (in the UK at least) like CLAIT and the ECDL (which coincidentally means European Computer Driving License).
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Stop complaining about users. The fact is that computers do act irrationally and don't work as expected and allow users to do really dumb things. Hell, how can Apple, Microsoft, etc. justify that their systems DON'T come with anti-virus software? That, in Outlook, clicking on an attatchment can run an installer? That's just plain stupid. The OSes suck in terms of usability straight out of the box for new computer users and nothing has been done about it. Apple gave up the mantra of user first a long time ago (just look at the dock) so I only see it getting worse instead of better. I work at an elementary school so it is VERY obvious that computers are not designed logically/intuitively. If a 5th grader that uses computers all of the time can't figure how something works, there is probably something wrong. Why 5th grade? They have enough exposure to identify patterns but are still readily able to adapt to new ideas. As for older people trying to understand them... good luck.
The ones that seems stuck forever in the "unconscious incompetence" stage of the progression of competency:
unconscious incompetence
conscious incompetence
conscious competence
unconscious competence
I disagree. The computer industry isn't about making computers easy to use, it's about making them useful. Sometimes those two concepts are mutually exclusive, and you just can't continue to cater to the willfully ignorant forever.
Example: I'm a computer graphics professional working for a university's web department. Every so often, an administrative assistant who has been tasked with "updating the department web site" will call me up and ask me how to do something, like put an image on the site.
"Okay," I say. "It's pretty easy. You know how you would add a link to the page? It's kind of like that."
"Oh..." they reply. "How do you add a link?"
"Um, all right. Well, you use a tag, just like you would to make text bold or italic."
"Tag?"
"Do you know any HTML at all?"
"Oh, no! I don't know how to program or any of that stuff. I just know how to change the text that's already there and I need to know how to insert an image."
There are several solutions to this person's problem. The most useful would be to teach them HTML. Once they were familiar with it, they'd never have problems editing a simple, static web page.
They could also use a WYSIWYG web editor. That's easier, but still not easy. Most of the time, people who use them that don't know HTML as well end up compromising because they can't figure out how to make Dreamweaver do exactly what they need.
The easiest solution would be to make all web pages text-only and update them with "Plain Old Text" interfaces. Line breaks would be automatically detected, white space would be recognized, and everything would make perfect sense to the user. The problem is, it's not useful.
In the end, the only way to make things easy for a technophobe is to strip away features. That's not our job. Our job is to balance usefulness with ease of use. A better term would be "usability".
I wish that my inferiority complex were as good as yours.
-RenderHead
Really. I'm fine with someone who's *intimidated* by a computer, afraid they'll break something, or just real cautious. But I lose all patience with people who are willfully ignorant and refuse to learn anything (and then conveniently blame a system or component for being "too hard").
I find that there's almost a kind of class attitude about this -- people who practice willful ignorance also think this somehow makes them more upper class or something because they're not having to sully their hands learning some technical skill. Sadly I also see a gender bias, with a lot of women taking that tact.
I actually had a huge fight with my wife about this one time. She is a marketing exec who was going on a long business trip to California. Prior to leaving, she asked their office's IT guy (small office, only one full-time admin/helpdesk guy) to configure her laptop for remote access. The night before she left, she pulled out her laptop and was *furious* that it didn't work and that it was jeopardizing other business she needed to keep up with while away. I asked her if she made any attempt to work with the IT guy, and she said no, she was too busy. I told her that it must not have been important to use remote access then, if she wasn't willing to spend 5 minutes running through it with the IT guy.
It's either important or its not, and bitching at the IT guy because you weren't willing to put ANY effort into it is total bullshit. The tools are valuable, but like it or not they are somewhat complicated and unless you work with them all the time, you need to put a small amount of effort into them to make them work for you.
And at that point her frustration with her deadlines and travel and my frustration from working with self-important marketing people dovetailed really nicely and we had a huge fight.
Now that right there is not really a smart sentance. you started out ok. but the last half just is non-sense. You are telling me that Apple has no inentions of becoming the number 1 computer company in the world?
Exactly, just as Subaru has no intention of becoming the number 1 car maker in the world. You can either try to mass-market your product with low profit margin (and it's very difficult to attain profitability with this kind of strategy on the tight PC market) or try to run a kind of computer boutique - sell in relatively low volume, but with very high profit margin. Since return of Steve Jobs, Apple obviously embraced the latter strategy (that's why there are no clones and there are interesting experiments with "luxury" computers, like the G4 Cube, the 20" iMac or the Big Al powerbook).
I've eventually come to the conclusion that I no longer am in the mood to answer tech questions for my friends, either naive or otherwise expert, until they convince me that they'll actually learn something on their own. Sure, it takes me five minutes to answer a question that might require an hour or more of research, but when someone's just given an answer without having to do the footwork, they don't respect the value of the knowledge. This ultimately leads to a never ending stream of 5 minute interruptions from someone who's not willing to learn for themselves. On the other hand, if they did the hours of research, not only do they gain the satisfaction of learning something new, they've probably just eliminated their next hundred 5 minute questions, thus saving both of us time. It's tough love, but sometimes that's what it takes to get someone else to respect knowledge.
The only reason this would be true is if your Mac world never interacted with the the rest of the world. The moment you try to interact, the hours start zooming by.
My girlfriend moved in last year. She's a Mac person. First she wanted to use my wireless network. It wasn't too bad, but most of ther WEP terminoligy was different so it took a little time. Then she wanted to use my networked printer. HHOOUURRSS later she could, but she still complains about the settings. Now she wants to get to my shared files. HHHHHOOOOUUUURRRSSSS later she still cant, even though the event logs clearly show she's authenticating.
My point isn't that Macs aren't good, it's just that they have lousy manners when it comes to working with others. If you want to ignore the fact that the rest of the world is actively trying to connect to each other then by all means please continue with your "Macs are easy!" fantasy. However, if you want to include the rest of us in your world then please acknowledget that they're every bit as complicated as, well, the rest of world.
TW
Finland has had 'driver's license' for computer users since 1994. 141 000 finnish computer users have got it. The Finnish Computer Driving Licence is an IT examination for everyone, the first of its kind. It is intended for those who have used computers very little, very much or not at all. It is mostly required if you're applying for a certain kind of job.
You can get some more information here
I think you're completely wrong. Either you don't hang around little children, or the ones you hang around with are stunted somehow...
I've seen an 18 month old sit on her mother's lap and play Flash games. She can't read, but she knows how to navigate a hierarchical menu going only off the color and shape coding.
This same child just turned three. Let me tell you just some of the other things I've seen her do:
1. Hitting the DEL key to get into the BIOS, then proceeding to set everything to random settings.
2. Change screen resolution. She only had to be shown twice.
3. Ctrl-Alt-Del when shit ain't working.
4. Insert, eject, rewind, and fast forward a VCR. She can use slow motion, also. She knows how to switch to "Line In" when she wants to play a video game.
We've learned not to let her observe us doing something "technical" because she will try to reproduce it, usually with disasterous results. Things like, changing the video RAM clock rate. I'm serious.
Pretty much any three year old I've met, whose parents aren't fucking idiots who damage their brains, has been an absolute genious. Something, I'm not sure quite what, turns them into idiots around age 6.
Is it parents failing to provide stimulus? Is it the retarding effect of the American public school system? Probably a little of both, but I assure you, children have absolutely no problem with technology. Stupidity has to be forced on them, they are naturally extremely intelligent.
After being laid off from another tech-wreck, I purchased my desktop box as they seemed to have a few extra after downsizing from 10000+ to 7 hundred. My brother, a tech-illiterate, has never had a computer but he wanted one so the kiddies could use it for school, games, etc.
I added a graphics card, DVD, CDRW and mucho software. I dropped it off at his place, gave him a very brief intro (showed him how to start the games) and said call me when you get the internet set-up. When he got the local ISP hardware, I went over, set the PC up, showed him and his equally illiterate wife how to send/receive e-mail and surf safely. I returned home happy with having introduced the family to the wonders of the net.
Not TWO days past before I get a call from my Bro, which I expected because he's techno-illiterate. He asked me where I had put the OS install CD. I was stunned.
It turned out that at work he was discussing with his work buddies (all labourers/plumbers/welders/etc) his computer learning, adventures and problems from the night before. Them being the computing know-it-alls they are, decided that they could 'fix' his problems. Well, with the days work being cancelled due to weather (it was -40 with the wind chill) they headed over to my bro's place for the big fixing session. By the time my brother called me the PC would no longer boot.
Making a long, painful story short, I had to re-install everything (can you believe they actually screwed with the BIOS?). It wasn't the tech-illiterate that was the problem. It was the tech-know-it-all. The people who are most dangerous are those that think they can fix anything with no experience, books, knowledge or common sense.
The car metaphor worked well here too. I told them that the computer may have had a broken tail light or maybe had the equivalent of a weak alternator but that was no reason to replace the entire power train.
I made my brother swear not to let anyone else near his PC. If he did - then he forfeit my gratious tech-support services.
The details of the 'reasoning' on the 'fixing' still keep me awake at night though....
My primary desktop at home is a circa 1995 Powermac 7600 running OS X. There is an open source driver that lets you run OSX on older macs. Performance is just fine, in fact a Linux/Windoze buddy was quite impressed with the speed. I have upgraded my mac in fits & starts over the years... A simple (3rd party) daughterboard swap upgraded the processor to a G3. RAM is now 560mb (the motherboard allows up to 1gb). Replaced the original hard drive with an 18gb scsi. A 3rd party ATA-133 card controls the second big hard drive and a (3rd party) CDRW. Threw in a cheap USB card so I could use my digital camera. With the exception of a trivial tweak for the CD burner everything was working properly the minute I plugged it in and restarted the machine.
My mac has all the advantages of a BSD unix with (arguably) the best GUI in the business. I've been an IT professional since 1991. I think I know what I'm doing.
You sound like someone who loves to tinker
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
How about the dumbasses on the other end of the phone? Case in point:
Bought an HP package deal - Celeron 2.7 GHZ machine. The power kept going out on it. I called technical support - they sent me through 15 different tests and then finally agreed with me that it was the power supply. They send me a box to ship it to California to do the work. "Be sure to note what is wrong with it on the supplied sheet", they say.
I get the box, load the pc, and put "Power supply bad; please replace power supply".
4 weeks go by, and the computer returns. First off, it won't boot the OS - can't find the boot device. Secondly, the slip that comes back with the machine lists all the work that was done on the machine: the OS was reimaged on the HD, the system was put through a battery of tests, and some video memory was replaced...nothing dealing with the power supply. So, I call technical support and explain the problem...they go through a number of tests with me on the phone - then they want me to connect the machine to my telephone line..."hell no", I say, "you're not getting inside of my network". Okay, they say, ship it back to us and we will reload the OS.
At this point I was getting steamed (the only reason I bought this deal was for the supposed benefit of the warranty service). So, after calming down I tell them, "send me an OEM OS cd, and I will reload the OS myself" (the CD was not part of the package from the retailer). "Yes sir - we'll have one sent right out".
Two weeks later, and still no disk. I give up - so I pop open the case and what do I find? The IDE connector for the HD is canted at a 30 degree angle - half the conductors are not in contact with the plug on the motherboard. I plug it in - and it boots right up. Over the weekend the power supply goes out 3 times.
I pop the case again, and remove the power supply - and replace it with one I was going to use in another machine (350 watt). I check the rating on the HP power supply: 250 Watts. The 350 watt power supply has been humming along happily for 3 weeks now...I inform my wife that we will never buy a computer from a retailer again - I don't care how much she wants the 'security' of customer service (it is easier for me to build my own machines and provide technical support on them than to deal with the so-called 'time savings' of dealing with a warranty; my time is money, and the retail warranty cost me more in my time than just fixing the damn thing cost me in parts and time put together).
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I think that those interviewed in the article and some of the responders are not really trying to understand the point of view of the non tech savvy. For us, computers truly have been a mixed blessing. They are amazing tools that are also quite intricate and often difficult to use.
Nobody should be surprised that people might be intimidated by computers when the study of this particular machine can earn one a PhD, and even then the student can be unfamiliar with many of the systems and subjects relevant to computer use. These machines are complex, expensive, and very imperfect. They do malfunction often, and fixing them is not simple. Personally, I wait for my (very tech savvy) husband do work with my slowly deteriorating PC because I am afraid of hasting the demise of a several thousand dollar investment by doing something ignorant, and I do not think that's unreasonable.
Learning to use a computer well and to troubleshoot that computer demands an inordinate amount of time, and often money as well (for books and classes). Nobody can afford to be an expert in everything, it's simply too costly. We all have to pick and choose. That some have chosen to become experts in a non-tech profession, doesn't merit that they be called "tech dumbasses" and the like when they encounter difficulties using their computers. (Though let it be said that I lose sympathy for a person who infects a computer with a virus by opening an unknown attachment after the first couple of times.)
I'm sure that computer scientists sometimes ask their doctor friends for medical advice, or their mechanic friends for car advice, and they wouldn't deserve to be derided for doing so. They've chosen to be experts on computers, not cars or bodies even if they have some basic understanding of each.
You're just adding fuel into the fire. I have something about the damn registry, too. At my work, I don't have admin privileges on my machine. But I have write access to all the partitions, including full access to the system FS (thank God!).
I cannot write in the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, it's ok, I shouldn't be allowed to write there. But some of my apps are broken because of that. No app should try to write on that part of the registry except when it is installed, all should use HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Those apps are not well-behaved.
Strangely, the apps I'm talking about are mostly Micro$oft. So, they are so concerned about the security of their system that they design their apps assuming full access in the system! See what I mean?
Other example:
In my college the machines run w2k, the disk and the registry are protected, otherwise they would last a few hours. Some apps are broken, of course. Even so, I find all kinds of shitware installed and I can't uninstall it because I don't have permissions!
Installing a fresh Linux may be more difficult than installing Windoze, but installing a secure Linux is much much easier than a secure Windows.
First, I tell my friends that I know absolutely nothing about MS Windows, and cannot help them with that. If I'm feeling generous I offer a Knoppix test drive and then I offer to install Linux. I insist that they have a modem for remote access. To start with they don't get the root password. If they are going to use the internet I insist they get the satellite system to report their current IP number to me. A site vist deserves a meal.