Do you encounter this attitude often? What are the reasons someone would not use computers, aside from a disability or just plain old stupidity? Would you be irritated if a person who did not use computers was constantly asking you to do computer related tasks for them, things that they could easily do themselves except that they “don’t do computers?” And what’s a good snappy comeback when someone tells you they don’t do computers?
Uh, I generally don’t care. A lot of people I know who don’t use computers are elderly, who generally don’t need to use them. (I’m thinking of my grandmother, who probably never even touched one in her life). She was neither disabled nor stupid.
I work with a pretty wide variety of age and SES groups. It’s tragicomic but understandable when I get age 60+ medical biller/coders who are sure they’ve deleted Blue Cross’s whole internet infrastructure every time they accidentally delete their desktop link “AH DELETED BLUE CROSS AGAIN!”, but it’s jarring and disappointing when I talk to a 28 year old who simply does not understand why she can’t send a 150MB attachment through her company email “WHY IS THERE A LIMIT?”.
Computers are how we get shit done, and will be for the foreseeable future. Being proudly ignorant of how they work is not a good trait.
My sister tried a computer for a while. Never used it for anything but playing solitaire, so took it apart, put it in storage, and it rotted away.
She gets by well enough. Most people are considerate enough to use the phone or the Post Office to get in touch with her. I help out some, fielding some contacts for her, and doing occasional internet research.
Funny how different two sibs can be: I’d rather go without shoes the rest of my life than give up my 'puter, but to her, it just isn’t the way things are done.
People are obliged to like the things I like and to disdain the things I dislike.
The point is already rapidly approaching where such an attitude is roughly equal to
“I don’t like to read or write, learning these symbols is a waste of time”
“shoes? god gave us thick skin on our feet”
“soap? Naw, just use water…”
Granted, the kludgey desktop PCs we have have a lot of conventions that are long obsolete and waste user’s time. Really efficient (for users), effective computers don’t require maintenance, they do tasks near instantly, they store the data automatically on networked servers so losing the device won’t lose information, they require no user knowledge to delete or install applications, their GUIs are self explanatory and do not require manuals…basically, iOS and Android.
I know people my age (68) who wear their ignorance like a badge of honor. It puzzles me, as it is becoming harder and harder to function in the world without be connected. Phone book advertising is going the way of the dodo, and I assume that at some point you won’t be able to find a plumber without the internet. And then there is the whole vast information bank that is available at the click of a mouse. Want to see France? It’s there in pictures by the hundreds. And there is the huge repository of the world’s best music called Youtube, which also contains the world’s largest how-to library. It baffles me that there are those who have no interest in what’s available to them.
My mother is afraid that she will “break” something. And she used computers for years when she was a bank teller.
My Mom’s 76 and pretty computer literate, thank goodness. She’s not afraid of them at all.
I haven’t run into anyone lately who doesn’t use them.
Actually, I do NOT find iOS and Android machines “self explanatory”, and I’ve been using computers since back before Apple was a thing and Bill Gates was still in college.
As for the storing things in the cloud - no thanks. I’ll keep my stuff on a portable hard-drive with a couple of back ups rather than trusting someone else to both keep my stuff and keep it secure. My choice. I’m OK with you doing otherwise. I find it pleasing that we have such a plethora of choices these days.
That said - in addition to the elderly component that never adopted computers (which is not universal - my dad, for instance, has a more up-to-date laptop than I do) my are also has a component of rather conservative religious types who simply see no need for computers. Heck, some of them forgo things like electric lights and cars and such. So I hardly find it surprising when that crowd says they don’t do computers.
I think we all have parents or other edserly people in our lives that don’t get/ want to use a computer. To me that is totally understandable and I wouldn’t dream of disparaging them. To tell you the truth, I’ve never encountered someone who wasn’t elderly who says they “don’t do them”. How would that work? Is there anywhere that a person in the Western World could work that doesn’t have computers?
I personally do not give a shit about cell phones and while I don’t go so far as to say “I don’t do them” the fact is, I kind of don’t do them, in the sense that I have one in my car for emergencies or for whatever reason I might need to use it, but basically it is not my main mode of communication. I know there will come a time when I will be forced to as land lines disappear, but for now it is a technology that I really could not care less about. I’m “only” 48, so I’m well within the age group of people who are young enough to have been introduced to and taken to them. I just personally can’t be arsed.
That’s odd, people your age mostly would have had some experience with computers before retiring and should realize that much information is now mostly online. They may not feel particularly adept with technology, but they should be able to figure out how to go to a website and search for basic information. Most people I’ve found that are in their sixties and seventies who try to say they don’t know about computers actually do know the basics of how to get online, they just don’t know everything about computers and prefer to find information via offline methods.
I wish more people would say that.
Save me a lot of tech support…
This! I just spent twenty minutes on the phone with tech support, trying to change my password on a Motorola Android. Turns out it was an AT&T issue, a little thing that no one ever bothered to tell me.
(My account name is accountname123. No it isn’t. My account name is accountname123@att.net. The fuckers never mentioned that part! So I’d change my password…no good. Then I changed my account name. No good! Fuckers!)
Self explanatory? NFW!
If you don’t want to use a computer in your personal life, knock yourself out. But if you want to business without one, you’re fucked. I still occasionally encounter someone who will say: “Fax it to me, I don’t do email”. They don’t get my business.
Old folks, not a problem. Many of them actually like it when I point out that they use more computers than they thought (the ATM, for example). They feel all modern and technified!
What gets me is university students or people who just finished university. Extra points if they tell me so while checking their tweets.
people incorrectly use the words “self-explanatory” and “intuitive” when they mean “Works like something I’m already familiar with.”
That seems fair enough to me but there seems to be some problem with the distribution of the official like/disdain lists. I have not yet received them but I don’t know why as I don’t do computers.
I don’t understand how being elderly is a good excuse for utter computer ignorance. Computers have been commonplace for well over 30 years, so your average 60-something computer illiterate was quite young when they began to appear in many homes and workplaces, not just used by the keenly tech-interested. They were only a decade older when they became ubiquitous at work. I just have a hard time imagining being no older than I am now and deciding that I’m never learning how to use a hugely wide-spread type of technology.
Yesterday, the cable guy who came to hook me up to Fios noticed I was working on a laptop and said something like, “I don’t do computers.” I’m guessing he was in his early to mid-50s.
It was a bit surprising to here from an telecommunications techie. To me, it’s like being a wildlife biologist but not enjoying the outdoors. I suppose it is totally plausible since installing cable isn’t that related to computers. But it is still hard to wrap my head around.
As long as a person’s ignorance doesn’t impact my life, I guess I don’t care that much. I have a coworker who “doesn’t do computers”. He’s always got to get someone to help him delete an email or edit a Word document. And he can’t seem to retain any knowledge, so he’ll have you help him with the same thing over and over again. I would be deeply embarrassed if I were in his shoes, but he seems to think it’s no biggie. Meanwhile, a tech-savvy 20-something is unemployed, wondering if he’ll ever get a job with benefits. I try not to care, but it’s hard.