Digg ThisTechnology can be a beautiful thing.
With technology, we can get messages to the important people in our lives in a mere instant; we can pay our bills and balance our checkbooks somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 minutes; we can take pictures, sort them, doctor them, and print them in minutes, where before it took a week or more; we can publish our thoughts, interests, and discoveries almost instantly.
The younger generations have adopted the new technologies eagerly. They see what can be done — they also see how things that supposedly can’t be done be done.
The older generation (older than mine, that is) has adopted technology better than my generation has, as well: they have more time to learn how to use it to do the things that they always wanted to do but never had the time: investing, genealogy, photography.
My generation, well, hasn’t done so well, truth be told: we’re the generation caught in the middle of a sea of change.
I have frequently been reminded of this lately, as I have taken a part-time job (no, no information on where — my own restrictions) to help pay the bills, as business is slow for me right now. I am on the “front line,” as it were, and I take many phone calls and talk face-to-face with many frustrated computer users.
And for some odd reason, the worst of the bunch are people from my generation.
As I see it, judging from hundreds of conversations over my years of selling said technology, I think most of the problem lies in the idea that: a) we don’t want to look stupid, so we don’t ask until a problem is far larger than it ought to be; b) we don’t want to feel stupid, so we don’t ask for instruction until a problem is far larger than it ought to be; c) we think that if so-and-so next to us can do it, so can we — regardless of the fact that so-and-so next to us admitted they didn’t know how to do it and sought training to learn how to do it.
People want to make mountains out of molehills. They want to make things far more complex than they really are, perhaps in effort to make what it is they are trying to accomplish that much more difficult, that much more of an accomplishment than it really is.
And therein lies the rub: it’s precisely this attitude that creates the issues, the strained relations, the arguments, the mis-communications, and the exasperation experienced when the technology doesn’t accomplish what we set out for it to accomplish.
Or, even more precisely, it is what happens when we shut ourselves off from learning new things, or from having the attitude that we are able to learn new things.
Folks in tech support and customer service have an acronym for this particular disposition, and it isn’t always used in a positive way.
It does, however, completely and thoroughly describe the syndrome, and if you remove the judgment from the term (which, for some reason, is extremely difficult for people in my generation), it accurately describes the situation (be sure to link through the two links provided here; wikiedia has a great, if not too short, article on this): PEBCAK.
June 20th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
You want technical? Let’s go: I work in a chemical plant that makes gunpowder and nitroglyercine. Dangerous stuff.
I am an Instrument and Control technician, proficient in electrical and electronic design and construction in dangerous areas. The Standards I use are the National Electrical Code, NEC 70, published by the National Fire Protection Association, NFPA, whose Codes are THE standard.
Our Loss Prevention (Saftey) department uses a Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) approach. Whereas the PHA asks, “What if?”, the NFPA asks, “What IS?”
I have to deal with both of these concepts when trying to do the best I can and therein lies the rub!
June 20th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Don,
Thanks for responding; I appreciate the input.
I’m not entirely sure of the issue you display, but what I think I’m seeing is that there are two groups you have to work with that support differing standards. In a major way, it is the same issue; in another, it is not.
Bear with me here: what I’m hearing here is that you have a group at work that wants to use the PHA, while you were trained (I’m assuming, here) in the other, higher standards.
It looks like both look at accident prevention, no? It would seem to me that both would be appropriate questions, considering the stuff you work with: “What IS the current standard of your readiness for an accident?” and “what would happen IF an accident would happen — and what would be needed to respond to that accident?” Also, “what COULD lessen the severity of that accident?” All of these would be appropriate questions.
In the situation you are in, I can see the conundrum; in the public technology arena, though, from what I write — the situation is entirely different: people don’t want to learn — or apply themselves whatsoever at all: they want it all done for them — for nothing, I might add…
In essence, I think that, while you saw my issue, you have another issue that is related to mine that you are responding to; my issue is different in that I’m referring to attitude rather than policy: you have a mix of attitudes, education and physics — with a little bit of government thrown in for good measure, which is a totally different story: it’s more like apples and oranges — the similarities are in that they are both fruit.
I was referring to individual attitudes about learning contemporary tools, not in applying standards to work.
I hear your point, though: I feel for you.