Thinking and Technology
There are a number of stories from people who work in computer support relating accounts of customers who are not very computer literate. Like the person who put the label on a floppy disk so that it covered the read area and then wondered why the computer couldn't read the disk. I have some sympathy with this. I had a client who had absolutely no idea of how a computer worked. I gave her instructions that she wrote down studiously, but she had no idea of what was happening. In fact she had no interest in understanding the mechanics behind the instructions. Consequently, if something didn't work exactly as she had written it down she was either lost or, even worse, would blindly follow the instructions (click on OK, open Explorer etc), even though, for example, the computer hadn't even booted up correctly.
Some of this gets back to what I've called ('How we Learn') 'Sequential Learning'
and 'Holistic Learning'. The sequential learners will learn a set of procedures
and follow them without necessarily understanding how these steps fit into the
bigger picture. The kind of scientists who worked for Nazi regimes or for Sadaam
Hussain and argued that they were only interested in the science were of this
type. They were not interested in the bigger picture. The woman who I was referring
to earlier rang up her ISP because her computer couldn't print. They had help
her with an Internet problem (I think the modem wasn't plugged in) and she didn't
have enough understanding of computers to realise that printing wasn't really
in their support brief.
Having said all that, there is another side to the story. There's a sort of
arrogance in laughing at people who don't understand computers or who are not
familiar with the technology. Everyone has to start somewhere. I know someone
who put the label on the writing flap of a floppy disk. She wasn't stupid, she
simply didn't understand how floppy disks worked. Unlike the lady I referred
to earlier, however, I explained what the problem was and she didn't make the
same mistake again. Many of the 'stupidities' that people encounter are only
stupid when you understand how the technology works. Here's some examples:
A friend had a brilliant idea for saving disk space. He thought if he put all his Microsoft Word documents into a tiny font they'd take up less room. When he told me I was with another friend. She thought it was a good idea too.
Isn't there a certain logic in thinking that a smaller font size would take up less disk space? In fact, if the document was stored as an image this would probably be true.
While visiting a network user's office to install a small program (we use Windows NT 4.0 here), he asked:- Him: "Can you answer a question?"
- Me: "Sure."
- Him: "See the recycle bin? Does someone come round and empty it?"
Makes sense to me!
- Customer: "I was wondering if this thing had a fan belt or something in it."
- Me: "Sorry, a fan belt?"
- Customer: "Yeah, it's getting slower each time I start it in the morning, and I wondered if there was a fan belt or drive shaft that might be slipping."
