A techie talks back

And I suggested, humanitarian that I am, ways in which technology companies might meet users halfway and provide instructions and online help that takes individual learning differences into account.

I didn't think I was beinf especially negative about techies. But I posted the column onto the newsgroup, and was blown away by the vehemence of one of the people who commented. I won't mention his name, but he is a regular in that group, and he has written often and scornfully of the demands of average users. It is sort of a "Mike, you ignorant slut" letter.

The language is replete with the inside lingo that Usenet people favor: "Flamebait" is when an insincere poster posts an idea he doesn't really believe, in order to provoke the unsuspecting into "flaming" them back. A "luser" is a Usenet "loser." Ned Ludd founded an anti-technology movement called the Luddites.

So, fasten your seatbelts.

Oh, come on Mike.

You are just the most recent example of clueless journalist, having discovered the Internet or being told to discover the Internet, who logs in and posts a truly stupid flamebait. You get deservedly flamed, so you go out and write EXACTLY the story you intended to write in the first place.

Having totally failed in grasping a clue, you pat yourself on the back and tell yourself and your readers that all those folks who have spent years and years learning computers are real mean SOBs simply because YOU and your readers are too damned lazy and stupid to crack a book.

In this, you are not at all different from the pitiful folks who refuse to learn to drive, operate a TV, use a telephone, etc. etc.

Technology has passed you by and made your education obsolete. The typical 12 year old is more technology savvy than you are and is more fit to survive in a technological society. Like any other endangered species, this leaves you frightened, bewildered, and very angry.

Since you don't have the intellectual honesty to direct your anger at the REAL target -- yourself and your lack of education -- you make the usual pathetic attempt to target the bearers of the ugly message in the usual human tradition.

Sorry, but I don't feel sorry for you. If your current employer expects computer literacy, before you make the obvious career move, you need to be aware that McDonald's is a very, very high-tech job workplace.

You had the opportunity to do your readers a service by pointing out that the state of todays technology is such that a bit of education IS REQUIRED -- further, that if they wish to prosper in that society, sooner or later they can expect to run into this problem.

If you had any real research credentials and reasoning ability, you would be aware that no matter how easy ANY technology is to use, there will always be newer technology constantly emerging. Those who stay abreast survive and prosper. Those who don't stay naked and huddle in caves and freeze to death because they refuse to learn how to make spearheads and arrowheads. Those societies who simply pull a "Mike Finley" and kill the arrowhead-maker sooner or later, deservedly, become extinct.

At least you can rest easy knowing that the phrase "Mike Finley" is very likely to gain the same level of recognition on the Internet as that of Ned Ludd and his ilk.

In a few years, rather than posting about "lusers", we will all be posting about "Mike-Finley-users" and their stupidity.

You, hopefully, will be sorting thru trashcans or sitting on a branch with the spotted owl--which is more than you deserve.

Comments: Well, I think I am mostly right and he is mostly wrong. But I agree it must be very frustrating, to be asked to make something as complex as a computer program user-friendly to people who "lack the necessities" -- or, yes, are too lazy -- to learn it properly. So he has a point -- we can't expect 100% easy-to-use stuff, because technology isn't there yet, and some of us, alas, will never be.

Second, it occurs to me that in a truly interactive age, it should be possible for the technology-using population to interact with the technology-creating population, above and beyond phone conversations that begin with, "Your product made me weep."

I'm not talking about user-response cards that are fed back to engineering and marketing. I'm thinking more along the lines of a Techie Appreciation Day, in which all of us who have benefitted (however fitfully) from the wonders of the age we live in pay homage to the hard-working, talented people who make this stuff for us -- the inventors, developers, designers, testers, and compulsive tinkerers who work, well, until stress cracks start to show up in their personalities.

And I thank him for the career advice. I know fast-food is a technology-driven business, and it is no hiding place for the technologically disinclined. While saluting knowledge workers, we mistn't forget our forces keeping the home fries burning.

But you know, I think it would be sort of marvelous if, whenever someone says something globally stupid, it was called a "Mike Finley." You expect to pay some kind of price for immortality.

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