I have a different theory than most. I think this has absolutely nothing to do with computers. In the days before computers, some people would never attempt to open their car hood, take the back off a radio, or remove the cover from a light switch.
Some people have an insatiable need to understand how things work, and some people just want the damn things to work. This does not necessarily correlate to intelligence or sex but computer programmers and mechanical engineers tend to love to continue to learn about things and know how they work. Part of that learning is poking around to figure it out. Other people get no sense of accomplishment from that and see it as a waste of time.
I think this is an oversimplification. It’s entirely possible to be very interested in how some things work, but not other things. I’ve certainly known astronomers who were very interested in figuring out the universe, but when it came time to use their computers to help them do that, they wanted them to Just Work.
Sounds like it was more an issue of the way you phrased your responses with a lack of confidence than anything on their end. They wanted a definite answer. You answered with “I think X, but I’m not sure.” which just isn’t as satisfying.
But again, there’s that weird need for “I must know beyond any possible doubt that this will work perfectly, or else I won’t try it,” which I just don’t understand. Clearly, if you’re asking someone how to do something you think they might know, and neither my boss nor my mother has any reason to assume I’d intentionally mislead them, so why not try what I suggest trying?
I read an article the other day about how some people seem to have a talent for programming and others don’t. The main difference between the people who can handle programming and those who can’t is that the people who can build consistent models of how systems work - even if their model isn’t correct. The people who can’t use different models for each problem.
…And even then, there’s different dialects of Computerese and then we have to bash out what a term might mean in a given dialect and tell the user that “Fnord” doesn’t mean what you think it means if you’re doing XYZ.
Yes, our heads hurt too.
This jargon also makes it harder to troubleshoot, especially if the user is someone who’s resistant to picking up the vocabulary even if we’ve troubleshot the exact same problem many times before. You might think it sounds cute to say “the computer went ‘weh?’,” but to me it just raises my blood pressure because I know that is not going to be a favorable sign for troubleshooting.
Heh. Usually, my calls to Tech Support start off with “I can’t get online. I’ve already rebooted my computer and unplugged and replugged in my modem (X number) times.” Then we go on from there. Please note that I don’t say that the internet isn’t working.
My main problem with the jargon is that it changes more rapidly than I can memorize it. However, it is a tiny consolation to know that the techs’ heads hurt too. Except when the tech in question is my daughter. As to why I don’t call HER up…she’s tech support for a kind of commercial software, and I’m not a government agency, and that’s who uses the software she supports.
I think that this is the place where I whine about not being able to copy a small image several times over onto a single page, so I can print it out on ONE PAGE, cut out the images, and paste the resulting “Professor Bodoni’s Dried Frog Pills” emblem on various tins and jars full of green Jelly Belly beans. The emblem has an image in it, which is why I need to copy it in MSPaint. I’ve tried clicking on the buttons, I’ve tried reading the help index and articles, I’ve tried Googling for help. I know it can be done, because my daughter’s done it with other images, but I don’t remember how SHE did it.
I think these compilliterates don’t actually understand how anything they do works. They just have a canned series of actions that produce a certain outcome that they somehow learned. Anything that varies from that by a whisker spooks them. It doesn’t matter if you show them how to do it with half the actions - that’s different and not what they’ve learned.
The change from Windows 98 to ME spooked my father so much he’s basically not used a computer since. There was this mental barrier that “things were different” and he just could not get past it. In his case this came with getting to a certain age where all mental flexibility just vanished (along with rational and critical thinking) within a couple of years.
I think it is somewhat reasonable to be afraid of breaking a computer by pushing the wrong button.
This is based on a somewhat loose interpretation of what it means to break something. But it is certainly possible to do enough harm that it takes days or weeks to fix, with just a single move.
I bumped the mouse on a Sun Sparcstation about 15 years ago when I was moving something on my desk, and accomplished a click-and-drag that moved a directory in one Explorer-like view into another directory that was a subdirectory of the first. And the directory I moved was my master project directory that contained all my data files for all my projects. The machine started furiously copying and nesting things, with thousands of files involved, and got them many layers deep most of which were alternating directory names. It was somewhat difficult to figure out how to interrupt the whole process (something about piping a process query to a grep command to a kill command), and it did take weeks to straighten things out.
When something seems to be going wrong on a computer, usually it’s seconds or minutes to straighten it out, but there is no guarantee it will ever be fixable. An IT fellow who always seemed very capable, bright, and hardworking tried on-and-off to get my office PC to print to the network HP Laserjet printer two doors down the hall, for five years. Five years. I always had to print to the expensive dye sub printer in the next wing when I was printing out 70 page black and white documents. He never got it to work.
So, I think it depends on people’s experiences.
It also depends on what they want to get involved in. Some people like to fix their own cars, some like to do their own taxes, some people even like doing drywall. Well, I’ve heard it happens, anyway.
There are many ways of being good at computers and being weak with them. Even somebody who, shipwrecked on a desert island with nothing but a tube of Z90’s and a torn copy of K&R, could build a satellite internet uplink, might not be able to install Zone Alarm. I know I spent a couple of days trying to no avail, and I actually did design a simple Z80 computer.
