Advocacy: A discouraging conversation

[Mark Jarvis]

Hey, don't forget the statistic (true or not) that we've all heard many 
times that 60+% of the adults in this country can't program their VCRs. 
Personally, I think that they simply don't want to know bad enough to 
bother to learn. For example my wife, who's a whiz with MS Publisher and 
can Google things out on the 'net as well as or better than I can, 
refuses to bother to learn how to use our Cox, VCR, or DVD boxes.

Along the same lines, I'll bet that 50% of the twenty-somethings out 
can't take the dimensions of a room and the sq. footage a gallon of 
paint will cover and figure out how many gallons of paint are needed to 
paint a room. (10-25% will start by multiplying (length x width x 
height) AAAaaarrrgggghhhhh!!!

-mj-

Siri Amrit Kaur wrote:
> On Tuesday 11 July 2006 09:32 pm, Alan Dayley kindly wrote:
> 
> 
>>I was dumbfounded that two normal people had no concept what a browser
>>was.  I didn't feel like starting an Internet 101 class at that moment,
>>nor did we have the time, so I dropped it.
> 
> 
> It's frustrating. I've run up against this myself and I don't even know how to 
> begin to explain it. Trying to explain what a browser is, or why they should 
> be concerned about their computer being exploited... or, heck, just trying to 
> get friends to delete the blasted headers from all the forwarded emails they 
> send me... 
> 
> No matter how I try to dumb it down, their eyes just glaze over. I can see 
> their mind shutting down, then I see the bemused expression on their faces 
> because, while I'm earnestly explaining, they're busy thinking that I'm silly 
> to care about this stuff. I wonder- why am I wasting my time trying to help 
> someone who thinks I'm a fool for caring about them?
> 
> I used to think that computer technology was too obtuse, too technical for 
> many people. But the more I see of this ignorance, the more I think that most 
> people are simply not motivated to do one iota more than they absolutely have 
> to to get along. It's like they want to drive, but refuse to learn what the 
> car, the steering wheel, the traffic signs and street are for.
> 
> My pet peeve is people not using the BCC field for group emails, and not 
> deleting address headers from emails before they forward them to me. I can 
> explain over and over, but they just don't seem to give a darn.
> 
> Teenagers think of cars as toys, while adults, for the most part, think of 
> cars as tools. Most people using computers today for surfing, shopping and 
> emails, are still thinking of them as toys, and don't have the respect for 
> them as the powerful tools that they are. They're intelligent enough to learn 
> what a browser, a firewall, or the BCC field is, but are they motivated to 
> learn? Do they justify their ignorance by telling themselves that it's too 
> hard to learn?
> 
> If people want to act like children and treat a powerful tool like a toy, I 
> might start telling them, as gently as I can, that as grownups they really 
> ought to try to _make an effort_ to learn the basics or they shouldn't use 
> the tool! Perhaps they can be embarrassed into doing better.
> 
> I'm not talking about the people who genuinely try. They just need something 
> explained well to them. I'm talking about the people who are deliberately, 
> willfully ignorant and want to stay that way. Perhaps we need to make this 
> resistance to learning technology an etiquette issue, rather than a 
> technology issue. Make it embarrassingly "bad form" to use a computer 
> stupidly. 
> 
> Gaaarrrrghhhh! You really got me going on this...
> 
> Siri Amrit