I have a job at my university supporting the online learning management system. Most of the people who call or come in seem to have never used a computer before in their fucking lives before I talk to them. I know I’m preaching to the choir here but why not share some stories?
Anyway I had this girl today who was having a login problem which was actually legit… there was an LDAP authentication error preventing people from logging in. She was the first one to call about it so I wasn’t aware of the issue yet when I talked to her and asked for some basic info. Also note that this conversation is still fresh in my mind and her quotes are verbatim of what she actually said.
I wanted to make sure she was logging in from the right URL so I asked “What does it say in your browser’s address bar?”
Her: “What are you talking about, and what’s a browser?”
Me: “It’s the program that you use to get on to the Internet.”
Her: “Uh…”
Me: “Ok towards the top of your screen there should be a bar with some text in it where you would put in a website you want to go to. Read to me what it says there”
Her: “Oh! OK, it says, [describing the favicon] h t t p …”
Me: “Ok, you’re logging in from the right place. Now I’d like to know what browser you are using. When you log on to the Internet, what program do you click to open it?”
Her: “Uh…”
Me: “Do you have a Mac or a PC?”
Her: “Well, I don’t have a Mac computer so I guess I have a PC.”
Me: “OK, is it Internet Explorer?”
Her: “Well it’s definitely the Internet but I don’t know anything about an explorer.”
(at this point I’m sure that it’s IE and the rest of the call was less eventful)
I’m sure some of you have far worse examples, but I think I was especially shaking my head because this girl was a student, maybe 20 years old, not some grandma. You’d think kids these days would at least have some basic computer literacy.
I understand and get what you’re trying to do here.
But I gotta say…I really do hate the casual way you you use "retarded"in your thread title. It sets an example of it being okay to use this as derogatory and demeaning term.
Speaking as the parent of a completely non-verbal and profoundly austic child who is also about to enter into middle school.
I feel your pain. I work tech support too. I’ve never dealt with someone THAT oblivious before, but they’ve come pretty close.
My most WTF moment was when the dean of a college thought his Word document was “crooked” and wanted it straightened out. We actually had to get a ruler out and measure the items on the screen before he would believe nothing was off.
Honestly though, I don’t blame people that don’t know computers very well because I think they are designed shitty from a user’s perspective. There is simply too much going on on the screen that doesn’t need to be there. And a lot of it behaves inconsistently, doesn’t look like it should, etc.
An iPad with a keyboard comes tantalizingly close to what I think most people really need. Full screen apps, modal dialogs, you can’t screw with the system files, easily add and remove programs, all your stuff is saved in the same spot, etc.
That’s fine. But don’t expect me to cater to your hypersensitivity. I would never insult someone that was actually mentally challenged and I’m comfortable enough to use the term knowing that I mean no disrespect to such people as your child. If you perceive it as disrespectful then there’s nothing I can do about that.
As long as you realize your using the word like this (which I don’t think is okay because it does set an example) does in fact bring some people in real life to tears.
I think that’s a bit extreme - I don’t want to derail this thread nor do I want to belittle your plight (I do understand). But I’ll assure you that I don’t mean disrespect with it and leave it at that.
Just out of curiosity, how can a “non-verbal and profoundly austic child” do middle school level work, much less usefully interact with other kids in typical middle school environment?
People like this make me look like a genius at work. I amazed a coworker when I taught her how to copy and paste.
It does get a little annoying when people do really stupid stuff though. Like closing a window I was in because they needed to use another program, not realizing that they could just minimize the window. Or all the times the antivirus catches something on our Internet computer because someone randomly clicked links. Thank goodness I installed an Internet security program but it’s still annoying.
Despite the fact that most of my students spend half their lives text-messaging, and can’t walk ten yards down a hallway without checking their cellphones or their iPods, many of them are surprisingly ignorant when it comes to computer-related technology.
Last year, our class had an online component, where students would do quizzes and could also read an electronic version of the textbook and get a bunch of other information. It was amazing how many of them had trouble with basic log-in issues and other simple stuff, even when the site was working fine.
At the end of the semester, i put together a little Excel spreadsheet that students could download, plug in their grades from individual components, and work out their final grade. It took me ten minutes. When i mentioned that i had done it, some of the students acted like i had single-handedly programmed the mission for the Mars lander.
Of course, some students actually cultivate an air of tech ignorance, because they think it will provide an excuse when they fail to do a quiz, or to submit an essay. You can’t imagine how many times i’ve heard thing like, “Didn’t you get my email?” or “I tried to upload my paper, but the website wasn’t working.” Nearly always crap, of course.
(It’s becoming rarer) Every time I hear someone saying “This computer doesn’t have hotmail” (meaning they can’t fin it in the drop menu in the addresses) I have so many graphically-evil thoughts that I need to go to confession.
Computers and internet-based technology are still awfully new, generation-wise. Plenty of people in their early 20s or younger associate computers with nerdiness still and nerdiness still isn’t a societal good thing to them yet. We’ve got a good number of years ahead of us before people are as comfortable with computers, the internet and technology in general as the general population of this message board.
I was working at a school as an accreditation administrator. In the mornings, I would write up drafts, send them out, and in the afternoon, I would help students with logon issues and minor computer issues. The hardest thing I did was reset the router. Later, they hired a new accountant. Supposedly, he would be part-time as an accountant, and then help with the computers so I wouldn’t have to do it anymore. Supposedly he had both a CPA and a computer science MS. The boss was really excited, because the accountant had an incredible resume. Apparently, the resume was pure BS. Not only did he suck at accounting, I had to show him ctrl-C/ctrl-V (cut and paste) REAAAAL SLOOOW so he could take notes.
If using a computer is so nerdy and undesirable, why do they use them?
I think the bigger issue is that a lot of people only became exposed to computers much later in life, and were unable to adapt. Y’all on the Dope seem to be the exceptions.
Nobody really sees computers as nerdy anymore–they just are past the point where they feel they are able to learn the new technology. They want the computer to work like a magical device, just like every other “new” device.
The worst thing I ever got was at school when a teacher couldn’t figure out how to use her computer when it was at a higher resolution.
I spent last year in a MSC for Translation and Computer-Aided Translation Tools. On the first day that we had CATT lab, the teacher gave us two handouts: one explained how to set up the external drive containing the programs we needed; the other one, basic terminology such as what is the computer’s “desktop”, that it is not the top of your table, what is a computer mouse, click, right click, double click…
This second handout came about because the previous year, one of the students did not own a computer and had never previously used one. Why did she then sign up for a program requiring computers? The teacher says she did ask but never got a response.
A lot of my classmates (both from the Interpretation track and from TCATT) were extremely technophobic. I could get away with being a nerd because a) I’m an engineer and b) I’m 42 instead of 22, but sweet Jesus… people that I know play Farmville would claim, and mean it, that they didn’t play computer games; people who claimed that their goal in life was to be an in-house translator refused to consider software localization or pharma (about the only two industries which have in-house translators, nowadays)… I know they considered me as alien as I them, but damn, many of them still thought you can have a college-level job without using a computer at all.
I designed a new web site for a client, and he sent me a freaked out e-mail saying his clients could not get to the site. I checked it in IE and FF and it was working fine, both http:// and http://www. versions worked fine.
So I asked him what browsers they were using and he had no idea what I was talking about. I said, like IE or Firefox? Still no idea. He mentioned Bing and Yahoo, so I finally figured out that people were trying to Google the site but it wasn’t coming up in the search results.
I then explained that since it was a totally brand-new URL that it takes time for the search engines to find and index the site (and yes, I did all the Google Analytics, Webmaster tools, sitemap, etc.) but it can take days, weeks, or even months for a site to come up in the search engines.
He still had no clue what I was talking about. <sigh>
Maybe you should parlay them into a contract as a creative for a games company (where’s an “:evil:” when you need one?)
Oh, another jewel from one of my ex-classmates: “but it’s not a computer, it’s a laptop!”
Using a computer isn’t nerdy. Understanding what is going on is still nerdy. When everything is working fine no one cares, but the moment things go off the track you often have to have some sense of what is going on backstage to fix it. In a world where computer literacy means knowing how to use Word and Excel, and where may daughter’s college “computer science intro” class got as for as rlogin, sftp, and some trivial Javascript which was plug in, more and more people know less and less about what is going on - but are told they do.
But when I started almost anyone who touched a computer was a programmer.
Which is why I found her ignorance especially obscene… I help both professors and students, but mostly professors. Generally the latter are a lot more tech-incompetent but I give them some leeway for the reasons BigT mentions.
But even when considering older people some have obviously adapted much better than others (and not just at the Dope). I can’t stand listening to schmucks in their 30s and 40s complaining about how confounded they are by the most basic technology because they’re just oh-so-old when my boss (really boss’s boss) is the head of the school’s technology department and extremely tech-competent, yet old enough to be most of their dads.