Slashdot Mirror
Late Adopters Prefer the Tried and True
smooth wombat writes "There is a fairly significant portion of the population which does not go out and grab the newest OS, gadget, web browser or any other technology related product. Why? It's not because they're luddites but rather, they are comfortable with what they know. Take the case of John Uribe, a 56-year old real estate agent who still uses AOL dial-up and only recently switched to Firefox after being prodded for weeks by an AOL message telling him that on March 1st, AOL would no longer support Netscape. Why did it take him so long to stop using Netscape and make the switch? From the article: 'It worked for me, so I stuck with it. Until there is really some reason to totally abandon it, I won't.'"
Which leads me to a motive I did not find in the article, the motive of the company I work for that employs several hundred thousand employees. There is no push to go to Vista or IE7 so they don't do it. They're late adopters in almost the same sense as no one's asking for it, Microsoft has not yet found a way to force the enterprise community into this pigeonhole and so none of them will do it. On an enterprise level, there's no such thing as 'early adopter' as companies are too busy taking financial and strategic risks to welcome technological risks or 1/10 of their employees failing to have a computer for a couple days.
My work here is dung.
A quick John Uribe search on Google turns up a man divorced twice.
So much for sticking with it, eh?
I'm sure his viewpoint will be thoroughly panned in these comments, but honestly, the computer and tech industries as a whole could do with more of this. Too often we're sold progress just for the sake of progress, without enough benefits to outweigh the cost of transition to a new [platform|framework|device|etc].
As someone who has been burned by new technology multiple times, I can certainly appreciate this approach. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
All this doesn't mean I don't like new technology. However, all the years of work in IT and high-tech startups have taught me that the best innovation one can achieve is a more simplified interface. Technology with more features and thus more complex interface is thus not truly innovative in my book.
Interesting. So, what is your take on the recent developments in moment and portal frames in engineered wood construction? I find many people woefully ignorant of even the most simple principles of home construction, and yet practically everyone owns a home. Flashing? EIFS? That's not even getting into energy recovery ventilators and the latest developments in composite lumber products. Nearly every computer tech I know still lives in a house with a common furnace or heat pump, and *gasp* an unreinforced concrete masonry foundation, even though there are far more modern and superior systems which do so much more.
What was that? You just use your house to live in and it works just fine? Oh...
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
[
Firearms are an area where this dynamic is often seen. There are lots of gee-whiz techno toys in that arena - caseless ammo, (that fucking stupid overhyped) MetalStorm (shit), etc. But when you really need reliability, like when you're relying on a piece of hardware to save your life, you tend to want the tried and true.
:-)
The best example I can think of? The Colt model of 1911 is still considered by lots of people to be the finest fighting sidearm ever. It certainly was in its day. That day lasted until the mid-1980s when the Glock came along. It's taken 20 years, but if you attend a *serious* personal defense class (not one of those "get your carry license in a day" things) where the students select and bring their own sidearm, you'll generally find something close to an even split between 1911s and Glocks. It's taken more than 20 years for a superior design to achieve acceptance by the cognescenti.
Old and obsolete often means tried and true. When I'm betting my life, I like the idea of tried and true. That attitude is often displayed by thoughtful folks in all areas of their life; we like what works and will change only when something demonstrably better is available and the inconvenience of using the old tech becomes sufficiently painful.
In other news, I'm considering switching to a digital camera any day now.
Yes, there are many, many stubborn people out there. Like the ones who still drive ten year old cars rather than the newest, shinier ones with all the bells and whistles they will never use like GPS, an iPod plug, tv screens and so on. Or maybe the ones who still use a vcr to record their tv shows because they don't have to leave it on whatever channel they want to record without having to pay extra for a service to pull down their shows.
These are horrible people who are devastating the American economy because they refuse to go along with the marketing mindset that if it's new, it must be better, and so you must go and spend, spend, spend.
The older generations, 40+ have no concept of technology and most of them don't want to.
Hey dipwad, I just turned 41 and I can tell you, I have more of a grasp of technology than the vast majority of 20 somethings wandering around my building acting as consultants for an ERP project. The fact that I choose not to have a cell phone, iPod, Blackberry and other electronic gizmos does not mean I have no concept of technology. It means I don't care about that stuff. Having any of those items will not enrich my life in any way, except maybe the iPod.
For the record, while there are people older than I who do not care about computers, I can tell you I have encountered quite a few, including my mother, who want to learn. In fact, the reason my mother uses a computer, other than keeping in touch with people, is, in her words, to keep her skills sharp. She retired ten years ago and still wants to learn. How about that?
If it requires any sort of effort to learn, people try to pretend its not there and stick with what they have until it is no longer a viable option.
You mean like driving a manual transmission, right? Because it's so difficult to learn how to push in a pedal and move a lever.
This saddens me greatly.
What saddens me is people like you on their high horse who think that everyone must always be on the cutting edge. That the latest and greatest is the only way to go. If you don't own what the marketing droids tell you to own, you're not worth the time or effort.
I work with people like you and let me tell, in the time it takes them to find the piece of information they want, or perform whatever task they want to accomplish, I generally have time to go get a drink or take a shit before they're finished, it takes them that long. These are generally the same people who constantly complain they have no time for a life, relationship or anything else because their Blackberry is constantly buzzing or they have to answer an IM.
If that's the kind of life you want to lead, be my guest. Most people don't give a shit about gadgets and do-dads but instead, want something to work well and last a long time.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
No, I realize all those things would be good, and I would like to rebuild the house to include them.
Except that I don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Oh, and its nothing like a new browser, which is free and should take minimal time to "learn." If I could rebuild my house with all that stuff for such a minimal cost, I certainly would.
I agree, but I have to ask... since I am a (relatively) new home owner.
:P
How does one learn the "tricks of the trade" without asking? I can read a million books on sill repair, but I can get a lot more information from the friends I have, and people I work with who have gone through this in the past... to realize that yeah, using the lollie columns in my basement may jack the house up and I only really need to move it up 3/8ths of an inch and repair the rotted section... but still, talking to someone who's -done- it is worth a lot, too.
I think that "thought process" or attitude is where the same technology questions come from.
Just my two cents.
(Oh and do you know how I can stop the sill rot without having to replace it? The house is 130+ years old, etc...)
I needed a new roof, so I hired a roofer. We'll call him "roof support." If he would have told me to learn more about roofing and that my questions were stupid, I would have fired him.
Next, I needed my AC serviced, we'll call him "HVAC Support." If he would have told me that my questions on general maintenance were stupdid, or he would have said "RTFM" I would have fired him.
I pay people for support for jobs that I can't or don't want to do myself, if they suggest that I learn more about their jobs to make their lives easier, I fire them and get someone that meets my needs.
I bill $130 an hour. How many hours would it take to be as proficient in Open Office as I am in Word, or better yet Excel, I wonder? I would suggest that to be as proficient in either would likely take between 60 and 100 hours. Just a couple of weeks of training, which is far less than a single college course, but even if the training were free, it has an opportunity cost of around $10,000. For a "free" upgrade.
First off, I was talking about a web browser, not office software. Second, your point is obsurd; 100% of the hours available to you you're not going to make billable. You're likely going to take 1/3 of those for sleeping, and probably another 1/3 live your life, and that's assuming you work every Saturday and Sunday. So those hours you wouldn't normally bill anyway are not part of your opportunity cost. Also, since you probably use those programs on the job, you'll likely be paying yourself to learn something new. Finally, I would think that no matter what field you are in, if you stop learning, you're going to become obsolete. So you'll need to take some time, whether billable or not, to learn.
Besides, not all construction is replacement. If you add a deck or a sunroom, or remodel the basement, you're looking at new things. Of course, like all analogies - mine is nowhere near 1:1. The point is that new things take time and effort (and often money), and we all can't be abreast of the latest (or even recent) developments in all fields. There aren't enough hours in the day. To think everyone will find interest in _your_ field or hobby is a bit vain.
I realize not all construction is replacement; if its new, there's less cost than replacing something existing. But we're not talking about construction, we're talking about people using older browsers. The cost there is minimal, since even modern browsers have Back, Forward, Stop and Refersh, and some way to track favorite sites. Not exactly a huge learning curve, and you can decide to look at the new features at any time.
I never said people can or should keep up with the latest everything, but they should be on the look out for something new and at least look into it a little. As in construction, sometime cost up front saves you more down the line. Like when the cost of maintaining my old car outweighed the cost of just getting a new one.
Let's see, I'm typing this on my main PC, which I literally found in someone else's trash four years ago (and its two 40GB hard disk were used freebies from the office). Though I never use it, there's a VFAT partition on one of the disks with Windows 98SE on it. I finally got a DVD drive for it last year.
My laptop, with a 133Mhz Pentium, 48MB RAM, and an 800 x 600 screen, was bought used 10 years ago from a friend who was in grad school (and thus on a tight budget herself). I've been using it quite a bit recently, to learn Lisp programming on (X + IceWM + Emacs).
The internet connection is 100MBps optical fiber, but I just plug my PC in directly for PPPoE -- no wireless router or anything like that.
Got an iPod last year - a 512MB Shuffle which was a hand-me-down from my girlfriend. Until then, my portable music player was a Sony MiniDisc-Walkman, which I still use for live recordings.
My cell phone is seven years old, and it cost nothing when I got it.
Stereo is a 15-year-old Nakamichi receiver, still in good condition -- better than the flaky Sony DVD player I bought four years ago.
OK, maybe I'm just a cheapskate. But really, I can't think of anything that I'd really want to go out and buy - that sort of thing happens only about once a year. (And I could well afford any such thing if I wanted it.) Basically, everything still works, and until it stops working, I feel it's a waste to replace it.