In my work as a computer resource for people, I often field questions that show a very basic lack of understanding of computers.
Or course, I make bank on the fact that people don’t understand them. Still, I wonder what is the real source of their confusion? For example, in just the past couple of days I’ve fielded questions that showed the questioner didn’t understand the difference between a computer’s memory (internal RAM) and the computer’s hard drive or storage.
I understand that, on some level, many people consider computers a step away from some kind of technological voodoo with arcane rituals and spells performed by an elite priesthood…meaning people like me.
In attempting to understand the problem, I’ve been contemplating my own reaction to new territory in learning. When confronted with a new area, let’s say a huge new database system I need to learn, at first the reaction is one of confusion. The information is all foreign, the terminology is new and it all seems rather huge and overwhelming.
I would think that’s where most people leave it with computer systems. They know how to read and write, they can understand pictorial references. Anything beyond that goes into that grey area of difficulty and learning curves.
For my part, I tend to take new learning curves by first traversing the entirety of the landscape, thumbing through the manual, looking at all the pictures, graphs and whatnot, and trying to get a feeling for the scope of the information, what subjects are covered, plus making some basic associations in my mind about what’s going on.
The Mac interface specializes in making computer systems approachable and usable by literate people. You would almost have to say the Mac is attempting to edit out the computer entirely so you can ‘just get things done.’
Unfortunately, computers are still hugely complex electronic systems, so that isn’t entirely practical until software can figure out problems and resolve them like people do routinely.
With computer systems, due to their complexity, even the Macintosh OS has some problems reducing the information load down to simplicity. One program like Microsoft Word can take days, weeks or months to master. So, we become generalists in most areas, and specialists in a few.
For me, the Macintosh is a territory I know fairly well in broad overview, with granularity in areas like operation of the OS, networking, hardware repair, interrelationships with other computers, software operation, troubleshooting and so forth. That makes me and my consulting brethren fairly handy to have around when a hard drive goes kerplunk or your email stops working.
Still, I think about the basic gap between the average user’s understanding of their computer system and the actuality of what’s happening in it. Personally, I try to bridge the gap by using metaphor to draw a convenient picture the user can remember, and by demystifying the whole process whenever possible.
The Internet is like a big mailing system for example, or your computer hard drive is like a big storage cabinet. Speaking to people in jargon just gets them into a tizzy to no good end.
Generally speaking, I’ve found most people understand the basic concepts involved fairly quickly, even somewhat technical ones, as long as the language is kept down to a minimum of jargon.
