One of my coworkers, bless his heart, is *the *most computer-retarded person I’ve ever met. He’s not old, either–in his 40s. And yet, I have to constantly explain simple things to him, over, and over, and over. He just *does not comprehend *things like what happens to attachments when you save them, or how to navigate the file system on his computer.
Not knowing if you’re on a Mac or PC, and not knowing what browser you’re using, are more the equivalent of not knowing the manufacturer and model of your car. When the mechanic you’re talking to can’t walk outside and look. So, yeah, this is like trying to have someone troubleshoot your automobile, but all you can tell them is that it’s green.
I used to work with a guy that called me over to help because
“When I click on this, the other thing goes away!”
“That’s because it’s underneath the other window. Just move it out of the way so they’re not on top of each other.”
“How do I do that?” “Just grab the bar and move the window”
I then painfully watched as he shrunk one side of the window, then extended the other, then shrunk the first side again, etc. The window creeped along like an inch worm. I just shrugged and went “Yeah, that’s it.”
Cars too. Lots of people in my neighborhood work on cars, but they all work on old cars. No private person can afford the diagnostic tools for new cars.
A physicist just programming in Fortran 40 years ago might be only marginally more computer literate than the kid who knows how to Google and use Facebook today. She probably had some JCL cards someone gave her, and submitted her deck to the computer center and got results back. I learned how computers work not by Pascal, Fortran or PL-1 but by using assembler, taking architecture classes, and having our very own PDP-11 in our lab. But I bet she can run an IBM 026 better than you.
Thanks for the analogy, as I’m a computer geek, but I’m completely and utterly helpless when it comes to cars - my five year old son, who has been interested in cars since he was four months old, knows more about them than I do! And, your analogy really hit home as I have no idea how many cylinders my car has, don’t know the first thing about most of the car’s internal workings, heck, the only reason I know that it’s a 2001 Chevrolet Cavalier is because I’ve memorized that information as something I need to know because I’ve been asked too many times before. I don’t know the make of any other car just by looking at it (unless I was staring at the makename on the back). (I don’t even know what colour my car is, but then, as a guy, I only know 8 colours tops. Reddish-purplish kind of colour). I have (grown) friends who know plenty about cars and every time I try to contribute to their conversations I get laughed out pretty quickly.
I realized that, if I substitute every car-related word in the previous paragraph with an appropriate computer related word, I’d have my wife, about whom I sometimes lovingly chuckle to myself about how much she doesn’t know about computers. Your reply did make me think. “Ignorance Fought”, in a sense.
And speaking of “board memes”, if “obligatory xkcd link” isn’t one by now, it should be.
I’m a writing instructor at a JC, and my class has an online component. All they have to do is set up a blog on blogspot.com and post their assignments. Blogspot is dead easy to use, since Google couldn’t be more user friendly, and a number of them do have gmail addresses. But every semester, without fail, 1/3 of the class is very confused. I walked them through the process and patiently answer all their questions, and even then strange things happen. One girl would NOT send me her URL to the blog, she kept sending me her email address. Another one literally created a new blog for every assignment she turned in. Another created three different blogs and posted randomly (of course, neither one of them ever sent me a URL but they couldn’t figure out why they weren’t getting credit). One student deleted several of her entries before I could grade them. She never saved them (wrote them directly to the composition window). When I asked her why she would do such a thing, she looked at me blankly and said “What?” Prompting this conversation:
“Why would you delete your assignments?”
“Oh, well, I thought you graded them and I didn’t want it cluttering everything.”
“Did your receive a grade for them? No? Then why did you delete them?”
“…”
“Do you have another copy?”
“…wait, what are you talking about?”
Believe it or not, I switched over to the blogging because it was literally easier than having them email me their assignments. It’s amazing to me how many 18-25 year olds do not know how to even email–explaining how to do attachments took several minutes of my day at least once a week.
The older students always act like I’ve betrayed them by asking them to create a blog. Seriously, people, it’s not my problem. Learn to navigate the internet with a modicum of efficiency or switch to a class that’s still 100% paper-based. I’m really not asking for too much when I ask them to post on a blog.
A lot of people who ridicule computer illiterates the most actually make their living because there are computer illiterates. Yes, some are more annoying than others but the last thing they should want to happen is everyone to learn all about their computer.
A couple years ago my niece turned 16 & got her first car. She was sooo excited. And appropriately so; its a big step, one I well remember myself.
So playing to her interest and enthusiasm I asked her what kind it was. She didn’t know. Not the model. Not the make. Not the year. She did know it was blue. And she’s a smart well-involved kid.
Cars are black boxes, appliances to her. As is her computer. I push *this *to make *that *happen is all she knows. For a very short list of this’s and thats’s.
Our task in the IT world is to make that level of interest and understanding sufficient to accomplish the user’s goals. 'Cuz by and large that’s all the public’s gonna give us to work with.
I recently visited the website for our county public libraries to see if they had any fax machines I could use. They didn’t. However, what I did see on the page was “Tutorial: How to Use a Mouse.”
OK, fine. I appreciate that some people don’t know how to use a mouse. But if that’s the case, how in the world would they ever get to this webpage that has an explanation for how to do it?
Then, while I was at the library, a woman came in wanting to know if they had a particular book of poetry. The girl at the desk couldn’t find it in the system (probably because she obviously didn’t know how to spell “senescence”), so the woman announced that she would go home, look it up on Amazon, and bring in a printout of the Amazon page. Uh, lady? If you can figure out how to look it up on Amazon, why don’t you either buy it there or heck, go to the library website and type it into the catalog search bar, which is just as uncomplicated as looking on Amazon? Baffling.
I’m 22 and pretty computer-literate, but the one piece of technology that baffles me is fax machines. I just don’t get them for some reason. We never had one at home and I can only send a fax with help or if there is a set of printed step-by-step instructions. I managed to send a 2-page fax at FedEx Kinko’s yesterday in only two attempts and felt quite proud of myself.
I help the computer illiterate all damned day, and the number one problem is that people will not fucking read. Web form won’t move on to the next screen? How about READING WHAT IT SAYS? Arrrrrghghgh.
Seriously, what with all that I barely have any bile left for the people who can’t handle the fucking address bar and Google every website.
The library computers probably come up with the library’s website already on them. Plus, it’s handy to have it there so when you’re helping a patron it’s easy for you to find, too.
Double clicking is shockingly difficult for old people. Not just the motion - the concept. Welcome to my life.
I don’t own a car. I don’t even drive–I’ve never had a license. But even I know that if you have a car, you should know or be able to find out a few essential pieces of information about it, like your license plate number and the car’s make and model.
You don’t have to understand computers to know that it might be important to have some basic information about what you’re using–information that’s essential if the person on the other end of the line is going to be able to fix your problem. And there’s *no *excuse for not being able to follow simple instructions in order to get that information if you don’t already have it.
I used to work for our local humane society/animal control, and one of my jobs was to teach new employees how to use our database. Yeah, some people didn’t know what they were doing, but that’s okay; I didn’t really know how to read dog body language, either.
But then we hired a new dispatcher, based in part on her resume’s mention of strong computer skills. This was in like 2003 or something.
I had to teach her how to use a mouse.
No, seriously. It turned out that “strong computer skills” meant “I used a cash register a lot in my last job.” Again, not exaggerating.
But even that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that, when she finally figured out how to use the mouse, she would drag the pointer across the screen, all the while making these strained grunting noises as if she were trying to relieve her constipation.
I normally was very patient with people on new programs, but I damn near lost it with her.
My boss used to put an emphasis on needing degrees in English, Journalism, or Communications for our proofing/editing department. After attempting to train several absolutely horrific proofreaders, I finally managed to convince him that what we needed wasn’t someone who knew whether or not to use a serial comma, but rather someone who knows how to send emails and navigate websites and server directory trees. I can teach the difference between it’s and its, but it’s apparently impossible to train someone how to use a computer, not to mention it’s a complete waste of both of our time if I have to show them how to use Outlook.
My most jaw dropping computer ignorance demo happened when I was working the reference desk on the adult floor or our public library. We have about 50 internet computers for public use, so we spend a lot of time troubleshooting those. A man came to the desk and said “the mouse won’t move. The pointer’s stuck.” I went to look at the computer with him and he said “this happened to me last week, too.” We got to his computer and he grabbed the mouse and said “see, it won’t move past here.” Sure enough, his mouse was stuck… because it was AT THE END OF ITS CORD!!! He didn’t know to just pick the mouse up and move it over.
I kinda like it. It means that I get treated like a Goddess just for knowing ctrl+ and other such shortcuts. Seriously - one friend who I’ve known for years through an online community had been struggling all those years because the screen was difficult for her to read - and then I told her about ctrl+.
I know one woman who, no matter how often it’s demonstrated to her, will simply not believe that you can click into a document and type a correction. No, if she makes an error, she’ll type the whole thing again - and will never, ever save it. She’d be better off with a typewriter if you could still get typewriter ribbons. Still, that only costs her extra time - it’s her problem.
If I were working with her, and this kind of thing meant that she spent ages doing that and I had to make up the extra work, I’d be justifiably annoyed. Fortunately for me, in jobs where I’ve had to do ‘extra’ work because I was the one who knew how to use computers, it’s always saved me loads of time because they always expect it to take far longer than it does.
I think computer mice/mouses are counter-intuitive. They require a much gentler type of movement than people expect, and it’s not obvious that, to move further down, you sometimes need to move up a bit first. Quite a few basic computer actions are like that. However, anyone who can use a computer to send an email is not at that level.
I work for a big ecommerce site. A few years ago, one of my staff came to me in a state that combined outrage and mirth. She’d been approached by one of the merchant leads, a guy with responsibility for a multi-million dollar chunk of our annual business and with years of experience working for the dotcom team.
He’d found a great new source for content for our product detail pages, and wanted her to “get it on our site ASAP.” Her first question, reasonably enough, was “okay, whose servers are going to host this content - ours or the vendor’s?”
His response was to look baffled and reply “no, it’s not on a server - it’s on the Internet!”
After reading some of these stories, I wonder how much is willful ignorance. People who are smart, or even brilliant, in other fields just don’t feel it is necessary to learn what other people would consider the basic skills necessary.
“Just grab the bar and move the window”