T

Tom Martin

Well Known Member
I have been using computers in my business for almost 25 years. Over the last few years I find that I am way behind the curve in my knowledge of the most basic of computer skills. I have an iphone, ipad, new TV, effis etc and increasingly I am finding set up to be more and more difficult, not less. Somehow I have moved from being an innovator in technology to someone who illicits sighs from those in the know when I express frustration with ?I cannot make it work? comments.
Typically this happens when I am calling a supplier with an install question. I have followed the online instructions but find that I have been stymied by a lack of common herd knowledge. For example, not knowing that there is a lock on an SD card. I hang my head in shame following that brief, but incredulous silence, on the other end of the phone line.
However if I was to tell someone that I wanted to build a metal airplane there are an amazing number of individuals who will bend over backwards, take my hand and teach me not only how to rivet, but the difference in rivets, guns, air pressure, etc etc. All of this is done with not the least bit of distain about my lack of the most basic metal work skills. It is expected that I know nothing about rivets and that is ok, no problem. For some reason it is assumed the everyone knows how to unzip files and move them from one medium to another, or how to make your new glass gadget stop shouting at you when you clearly have enough fuel for the trip.
My name is Tom Martin and I am a computer illiterate. Am I the only one?
 
I agree although I've caught others on the lock on the SIMM card!

I have somewhat the opposite issue. I wrote my first FORTRAN program in 1972 - on paper punch tape - and went through punch cards and the first editors and debuggers and onto CRTs and then early PCs etc etc.

These days the youngsters think they have to talk really slow and at a very low level to me like I am some kind of idiot when talking about databases or application development.

It's a double edged sword I guess. Perhaps we all need to take a minute and figure out the level of competence of the audience.

I do agree 100% that it is an amazing group we belong too. The helpful attitude and willingness to help anyone at anytime is really impressive, and I have not found it in very many other groups. Perhaps the nature of our hobby attracts people who are inquisitive and appreciate help and give help in return. We want to return the courtesy.
 
Here is my $.02 on it.

The world of rapidly changing technology is something that belongs in most part to youth.

The world of building metal aircraft, is something that belongs in the most part to us older folks.

One group tends to be quite secure in who they are, and to be of a mindset to offer help to those in need, and the other group tends to be less secure in their place in life, and to be of a mindset of needing to prove their abilities.

As I recall, this is known as the "Young Turk" or "young Lion" syndrome.

This is a vast generalization, and of course there are individual exceptions, but ask any father of a teen age son------or better still, a step father.

This site is populated by enthusiasts, and help lines are staffed by employees------draw your own conclusions about this.
 
Last edited:
For the most part, what has been said is true. But I've seen the same kind of high-tech condescension from people instructing others on avionics systems. However, while I admit it is commonly youth talking down to older people, I have seen plenty of examples going the other way. I pretty much made my niche in network administration and support by being able to communicate with people at all knowledge levels, but I know too many in the industry who divide the world into "those who get it" and "stupider than dirt" regardless of age.

I have to say, though, that I've been guilty of condescension myself, usually toward inexperienced tech support. I just hate when I call for a specific reason, because I have usually done thorough diagnostics myself, and the techie insists upon going through a diagnostic script that has nothing to do with my problem. It's one of the systemic failures of support and training that the people who are good at it seldom stay in it very long; their very success moves them out quickly.

However, a heartening note to everyone out there; there is more emphasis in the art of interface design. We've come a long way from text-based interfaces and real research is being done into the way we interact with technology. This is nothing new really, but the field is beginning to emerge from it's infancy and things are getting better. If you don't agree, imagine using some of our current technology with the interfaces from 20 or 30 years ago. It'd be like driving an Indy racer with a tiller and hand-throttle used by early cars. It always takes utility time to catch up but it happens.
 
CAD user

I am lucky enough in my engineering career to have progressed from slide rules and drafting boards to CAD/CAM on computers. And yet I too find many current forms of communications technology unnecessary, and so am out of step with it. I have an 8 year old cell phone - no camera, good enough.

Strangely, we are building metal aircraft here whose technological roots are in the 1930s and many of us are fitting them with glass cockpits - computer driven displays! Hope I'm up to the care and feeding of my glass cockpit when I get it installed.
 
I've been doing software development since the earlier '80s and I will state that the rate of change is accelerating. New technologies are appearing much faster than ten or twenty years ago. But in this game it's always been necessary to stay on top of the technology. Now the difference I find is that it's necessary to specialize more and stay proficient on a smaller slice of the overall pie.
 
you are not dumb

Tom, So you just hit on one of my hot buttons.

Most times when the user has adequate background (as it seems you do) AND they cannot figure out how to do something, it is a case of bad design. You are not dumb, the designer or engineer just did not think it through.

There are two different general ?mistakes? I see being made.
  1. The interaction has no ties into the historical way of doing something. Sliding a small switch on the side of a rectangular object does not signify locking/unlocking for most of us. So because someone cant ?figure it out? does not make them dumb, it is due to bad design. The ?young? people can easily adapt because they have no history with a particular interaction. Think about how you lock a car door or roll down the window.
  2. The second ?mistake? I commonly see happening is; to hold onto an interaction when it does not translate into a new type of interaction. This is harder to explain. If you push, turn, or slide a ?button?, you usually have some expectation of what will happen. When the designer does not intend that action, they should not use that type of control. This is hard because designers/engineers normally try to borrow from what they know. When you move to touch controls, these are not the same as physical buttons and are not constrained by their rules. The designer needs to rethink what they are trying to accomplish, what the user needs to understand, and the environment in which they will be used, in order to design the controls properly.

I see every manufacture of ?glass? making these mistakes. They all want to whip out the newest gadget, but have the constraints of time, money and access to great talent.

I am not sure there is much we can do about this. It is intrinsic in the process. The best we can do is to raise our hands and say ?this does not make since to me?. For example, touch displays (as they are implemented today) have no place in the cockpit. This violates both the 1st and 2nd mistakes of user interaction. Why not implement finger guides and/or gestural control?

Sorry for the long post, but the point of this is that you are not ?dumb?, it is just that the design was not thought through and the implementation is bad user interaction design.

As for the attitude of the ?young lions?, this has been happing throughout history. This will never change. But take comfort in that they too will get old and be treated like they know nothing. :)

I'm about to hit 25 years as being a designer. (product design, graphics, and user interface)
 
I don't think so

Tom Martin said:
My name is Tom Martin and I am a computer illiterate. Am I the only one?
Click to expand...

I'm a know it all. I know because my wife told me and I trust her implicitly to tell me what she thinks.

However,
I gave up on a late model IPAQ handheld because it did strange things without me telling it to, and did not do the simple things I expected. After months of looking at hardware and software, I moved to the Itouch and found it transparently did some things I wanted. This process took months to recover from backups that looked fine but decided not to work. I find programs and hardware sometimes do not follow their own statements of function. I agree with Tom Martin. My name is Larry and the countless hours I spend each week trying to defend data from computer terrorism makes me feel like a know it all illiterate.
 
Tom,

To me, anyone and I mean anyone who makes me feel inferior because of lack of knowledge is just showing their ignorance and bad manners. The increasing rate of innovation and new developments in the Computer and IT industry means that nobody can stay on top of everything and even an expert in certain IT fields, such as myself has to resort to RTFM or calling a help line occasionally when the manual is found wanting. Help lines are there to provide assistance to users. If an employee working on a Help Desk makes a user feel inferior, then they are in the wrong job and should be removed immediately.

I have also found that a superior attitude complex is one way of hiding a persons lack of knowledge.

Just remember, there is no such thing as a dumb or foolish question. It is the answer that can be dumb.
 
Lack of documentation

I spend a lot of time pushing older people thru technology barriers. One thing I find that really has a profound impact of "tech know-how assumptions" is a lack of documentation. It's not that the doc only helps the end user. If a company takes th time to write good documentation it means they had to actually teach their doc writers how the software / hardware worked and it also meant there was common (and tested) documentation between th customer and support persons. Way too much technology today's is completed and updates so frequently, that there is no doc, no internal training, and thus too many assumptions.

When I need to answer a tech question, I all too often need to handle the tech personally and run thru three of four attempts to find the answer. Only then can I walk someone thru how to complete a task.

The biggest "generation difference" is that "group A" (us younin's) try a perceived random bunch of things without frustration to figure out how something works. While "group B" (us old farts) try logical attempts where each is similar to the others and get frustrated when none work. When a "group B" person sees a "group A" person uncover the answer, it looks like total luck and nothing they would have ever throught to try. It's nearly impossible to do any of this kind of "teaching" over the phone.

My advice for those who get frustrated with technology is to enlist a youngin' to show how to work a piece of software or technology. In return, some of those same youngin's will be amazed and seeing an aluminum skin get riveted to a rib :)
 
I would not want people to get the idea that I find all tech support inadequate. The other day Rob Hickman, Advanced Flight Systems, took my hand (figuratively speaking) and walked me through the steps needed to update my new 4500. He was sympathetic and I can imagine that he will indeed think of ways to accommodate those who are not fluent in tech speak.
Basically the communication problem revolves around a simple truth. I do not do this stuff every day. If any piece of electrical equipment is working, and doing what I want it to do then I do not bother updating software on a regular basis. When I do run into a glitch and finally have to update it might be a year or two since I have actually had to do that function and during that time not only have the steps changed but the technology has changed. As others have mentioned designers need to take this illiteracy issue into account when technologies change. I am not against change, but I hate having to waste airplane building time learning how to do a simple upgrade on a piece of equipment. My high speed wireless internet is no longer high speed and this also compounds issues dealing with ever increasing file sizes
I thank those who have responded to my rant with positive comments.
 
Tom, you are correct, there is good tech support out there. The problem is that it is fairly rare due to the nature of support - usually a broad user base with varying experience and knowledge and, sadly, a support base with similar characteristics. Add to that the complexities of the systems being supported - I am considered an expert in MS Office, for instance, but I rarely use anything but the base capabilities. If helping someone, I often have to learn the answer myself before I can answer them. Thankfully, my depth of experience shortens my learning curve dramatically but not every 'expert' has the same background or training. We even hear this with the RVs (Ha! See what I did there? I made it RV-related! :D); the quality of support depends on who answers the phone.

You did bring up a valid facet of the problem, though, which is that it is difficult to retain expertise in a feature-rich system when you don't commonly use all the features. Way back when I was in high-school (yes, they had them back then), I was something of a computer geek. This was in the late 70s and the personal computer (not the IBM PC but things like homebuilt computers) was just hitting the scene; I had my exposure on time-sharing systems at school and the local university.

Another phenomenon of the time was the word-processing system. What started as essentially a publishing tool had been reduced in size to something like a large freezer and the cost was something like an import sports car. In my town, more than one small business purchased one. Now, picture the poor secretary who, often, had just come to terms with the switch from her Underwood typewriter to an IBM Selectric. Generally, all she really needed to do was type a document, but it was no longer as easy as before. Forget about using features such as spell-checking or mail-merge. I picked up a bit of spending money by showing people how to use their boss's status symbol to do common tasks, keeping it simple, and then being available when they were ready to take the next steps.

It highlights two tech-support problems: sales naturally pushes features that the enduser probably doesn't need, so there is the need to simplify instruction to match the tasks the user wishes to accomplish. Otherwise we overload the learner with a host of features they'll never use or at least remember how to use when they finally encounter a need. I'm facing that as I train to use the G900X; there's a bunch of stuff there I don't expect to use everyday, but I need to be able to easily do my normal tasks or the system will be useless to me. The second aspect is the flip side of that: when I do need a feature that is uncommon to me, I need to be able to figure it out quickly or get help/documentation that can give me access to the feature quickly. Otherwise I risk frustration or worse, which can make an otherwise valuable system be perceived as useless to me.

One other point before I get off the soapbox: the quality of support is dependent upon both the user and the support person. I did support at IBM for several year and found that some users were much easier to help than others, for a variety of reasons. Four years of network admin and support for the Anesthesia Department at University of Chicago provided me with some of the best users ever; highly intelligent but not necessarily tech-savvy. They'd keep their questions in their task domain and I could give them answers to get them on their way quickly. On the other hand, I absolutely refuse to help my wife with her computers - she knows too much and any attempt to help her devolves into an argument. When she deals with a stranger over the phone, her problems are resolved with much less frustration for all around. So, sometimes, the answer is to get another opinion.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.