It occured to me recently that the magority of computer users don’t really see the computer as a tool - they see it as a challenge. A mysterious box that they don’t really know much about.
On first thought, this sounds sort of ridiculous. How can someone not know how to use their computer, you ask? Well, think about it. Why do places like Geek Squad, Nerds on Site exist? Exactly, some people don’t really know how to fix their computer, and to some extent how to use it.
It’s almost as if they’re afraid of it. Sort of like a new driver. They use the car, and it gets them around, but they’re always afraid they’ve done something wrong, or that something is going to break, or happen, and the user won’t know what to do. This feeling subsides over time with new drivers, but it never really seems to go away with uneducated computer users. They see using the computer a challenge, something that is very complex and alien to them.
The cryptic error messages Windows pops up don’t help, either. “dllhost.exe has experienced a problem and needs to close”. If you saw that for the first time, what would you think? “It had to be something I did!!”, is what most people would probably think, which in most cases isn’t true. Error messages like this aren’t really useful to the average end user, and tend to scare them.
The media, ISPs, and anti-virus software makers don’t help much with people’s perceptions, either. They try to portray malware as this thing that worms it’s way into your system, no matter what you do. But it won’t happen if you buy their software!! This is pretty much crap, as most of you know. It enforces a false sense of security, and makes people do risky stuff. It’s very easy to avoid viruses if you don’t engage in risky behavior, and keep your software and operating system up to date, which brings me to my next point.
Updates. They’re the thing we love to hate. “Aww, another update? I gotta restart again!”. Experienced users see these updates as something that is required to keep them safe and secure, but the not so fortunate don’t really see the point in updates. I once asked a friend why he wasn’t installing his Windows Updates. His response? “Well I already have Windows I don’t need more updates”. People don’t seem to understand the purpose of updates, that they patch holes in software. “Microsoft (or any other software company) wrote it once, so why should we need to update it? I had to be perfect the first time.”
Also, if someone only turns on their computer, say once a week to check their email, chances are there will be some update waiting for them when they start up. This becomes annoying to them, very quickly, so soon they just stop updating all together, which is when they get infected by a virus, or spyware, probably by clicking a bad link in their email.
All of these problems couple together to make a PC seem like a mysterious challenge to infequent and unexperienced users. Some of the fault of this lands on the developers of the applications and operating system(s), for not making things as clear and user friendly as they could be, but some of the fault also lies on the user. Call me insane, but you need to take lessons to drive a car, so why not take a lesson to use a computer? You can potentially effect thousands of people with a computer, so it’s not exactly a dinky tool. Computers are becoming such an important part of our daily lives, I think it’s insane not to teach people how they work, and how to use them correctly.
