An Unseen Disparity

[tendomentis]

I have to ask, and I trust this is the correct part of CS for it:

Is there truly some unseen (or unmentioned) intelligence disparity between the people who CAN use a computer and those who can't? I know it's unkind, and I endeavor to be patient, understanding, and (above all else) attempt to help them understand WHY a particular solution works (ideally so that when confronted by the same problem again they would know what to do).

Some people are really good with this. If I walk them through a solution, they look frustrated and glabberfasted, but they actually GET IT.....

....where others get pissy and short and put-upon for the woes of the computers, and worst of all they come back to me with the SAME EXACT PROBLEM scant hours later.

I do this for a living (and have for many years now). This isn't new to me, and I always attributed such behaviour to the normal learning curve for new technology, but lately I've really started to question if there isn't something more to this.

[wagegoth]

I voted for the second option, but I wanted to add to my answer. This, of course, is all my generalized opinion, based on what I've seen over the many years I've been working with computers and users.

There's an intelligence disparity because you have all types of people who now have to learn to use a computer. Everyone in our office, from the mail room to the managing partner, uses a computer. Some are better at it than others. To an extent, there is a difference based on intelligence level, but there is a major difference in the type of intelligence.

People who are logical are usually better with computers. People who are close to or on the autism spectrum are often very good with computers. People who are open-minded and interested in learning will often do better with computers.

People who don't do well with computers are often unwilling to change, to think outside the box (sorry, it fit), anthropomorphize the computer and are upset when it doesn't respond like a human. They also tend to be the social types, talking, chatting, more concerned with who is doing what to whom than with getting their work done. They are the type of people who, rather than looking something up on the computer in under a minute, will stop, make a phone call, leave a voicemail, then wait for a human to call them. Email would be faster, but they don't like to use it either.

Anyway, personal observation, mostly, but that's what I've seen.

[HawaiianShirts]

I had to vote for a disparity of some kind simply because of the abundance of people who ask questions like this: "I'm trying to install Program X. The computer says 'Click on OK to install Program X.' What should I do?"

They obviously speak English. The computer is communicating information to them in simple English. Yet somehow they don't get it.

I'm going to agree with wagegoth here. I think it's an excellent way to explain it.

I'll second that.

I want to add, though, that I don't think it's purely intelligence that influences a person's ability to use a computer. Sometimes it's just a willingness to learn, or a lack thereof. My grandmother is almost 81 years old, and, while she's no tech by any stretch of the imagination, she uses her computer every day for internet research, email, games, and her genealogy projects. I have a regular customer at work who is just a couple years shy of 90 who plays World of Warcraft with her grandsons who live in another state. My mom, on the other hand, is afraid of technology and refuses to learn more than she has to learn about even a simple CD or DVD player.

But, yes, there are people who are just idiots. I think some can hide their idiocy in normal life. Computers are just their kryptonite.

[Gruesome]

I don't think the disaprity is so much in intelligence as it is other factors.

Case in point: my father. He has 2 degrees from a major US university, so he isn't a moron. He worked for many years as a mechanical engineer - again, not a moron. After some health problems and a few bad turns, he has been sitting in front of his computer surfing the web for almost a decade now (OK, there is some evidence of being a moron at this point.)

Last year he had to ask me HOW TO CUT AND PASTE.

So he isn't stupid, just inexperienced. He doesn't know HOW to ask the pertinent questions or WHAT to look for and the PC is just a strange, magical creatue to him.

I think some people, and I'm going to call out my own kind and guess that a lot of Americans are pretty bad about this, think everything has been thought out and vetted and OK'd and nailed down so that NOTHING can ever go wrong, and if it does then there is a lawsuit to be had and/or an evil employee who hates them and caused the problem intenionally. The dumb ones: well, just a bit dumb/dim. The evil ones: entitelment whores. These people think that EVERYTHING should be immediately obvious, easy, and infallible and fool proof. Thus, something complex like a computer is just a minefield of potential problems.

THOSE people can go ahead and get off my planet.

[volatile]

I have to ask, and I trust this is the correct part of CS for it:

Is there truly some unseen (or unmentioned) intelligence disparity between the people who CAN use a computer and those who can't? I know it's unkind, and I endeavor to be patient, understanding, and (above all else) attempt to help them understand WHY a particular solution works (ideally so that when confronted by the same problem again they would know what to do).

Some people are really good with this. If I walk them through a solution, they look frustrated and glabberfasted, but they actually GET IT.....

....where others get pissy and short and put-upon for the woes of the computers, and worst of all they come back to me with the SAME EXACT PROBLEM scant hours later.

I do this for a living (and have for many years now). This isn't new to me, and I always attributed such behaviour to the normal learning curve for new technology, but lately I've really started to question if there isn't something more to this.

I don't think it's unseen at all. If anything, it's as apparent as an elephant in a room.

[Gerrinson]

Oh, there is a great disparity. Or is that despairity?

I just had one call me during lunch. (Side note: Why is it ALWAYS during lunch???) It seems that she was unable to edit or delete text in an email she was trying to send. I had her close and open the software, same issue. I have her reboot, same issue. So, I take the rest of my lunch to walk down to her office and have a look.

The problem was that she would open the email, then skip the part about clicking 'Reply' and just try to type into what she was reading. This woman has been in her job for over 2 years and has been replying to emails the WHOLE time.

And while I was there, she had a question about how to enter a room charge. Of course, she works in the reservations department and does this numerous times a day, every day that she is at work. But she still can't do it without help.

It's wrong to beat someone with a keyboard, isn't it?

Oh, and to get back to your original question, she's only slightly below average for our end users. Even with click by click instructions and screenshots, it's just too hard for a lot of them. One last example: How do I save files to my thumb USB drive and do I have to keep my thumb on it for it to work?

[Rappunzill]

I've got to say Other. I think it is often that people have decided (or even been told) that they are bad at computers. You can learn anything, including the idea that you cannot learn something. Hence, the blank and unprocessing stare when asked to do something.

[Yfandes]

I have the most frustrating time at my office (a marine science lab).

Our director, with a phD, who taught me some DOS tricks back in the day, has actually been loosing computer skills. He calls me up because he forgets how to sort in Excel, or resize a picture in power point. He has 38957328 post it's by his computer with directions for clearing his cache, or finding his netscape mail director, or how to change his virus scan times... He calls me up weekly to help him with inanely simple things, or to fix whatever he broke. I'm actually worried about him. I'm so glad that hes retiring and I dont have to go through another upgrade with him.

Our port engineer (same age as our director), who 4 years ago said he would never touch a computer, is now a total computer geek. He searches, he optimizes settings, he downloads mauals, he googles problems and answers before coming to me, he totally rocks! He actually had to explain to our director how the right mouse button works ("right to view, left to do").

I think Wagegoth and HawaiianShirts both have good explanations. Some people arent actually interested in making things work on their own, others are.

[Soulstealer]

There's a disparity in different intelligences in all things people do. Some people may be more technical minded and can grasp computers better. Although some people are just dumbasses.

[SpyOne]

I think the problem really boils down to this:
Some people know a lot about computers.
Of the people who don't, and are going to be calling tech support:
Some people are like me: I've owned a computer since 1978. My knowedge of computers peters out a little in the post-1988 era, but I understand things like discs and drives and electricity and how a cd drive works, and I've had a computer case open and replaced parts and drives and stuff.

Others are more like my father, who's fairly convinced that his VCR and his microwave are conspiring agaisnt him, who dislikes anything that has a digital display, who can't be bothered to learn how the timer on his stove works (as that's a feature that doesn't interest him, and he has a perfectly good wind-up timer). The man took a course in using a computer once, and learned a great deal. Still, he is frustrated by (and frankly afraid of) any technological device that does things he didn't tell it to and doesn't want it to.
Explaining to him why or how a given fix works is pointless: he doesn't really believe you. He knows that how the machine works is beyond his comprehension, and he expects it will continue to thwart him by acting in unauthorized ways regardless of what you tell him to do.

My father is not a dumb man by any stretch of the imagination, but he knows very little about electrictiy, and basicly nothing about computers. To get him to a point where he might understand what you have to say (roughly where I am) would take decades of instruction. He'd need classes.
He'd get it, but you don't have that kind of time.


My mother's father was even worse, and some of your customers are going to be like him. He was a very smart man with advanced degrees, but ... the phrase my mother used was that "he has changed all he can in one lifetime". The man grew up in a town that was important, and he used to say you knew it was important because 2 people in town had a telephone, and one of them owned a car. He was an adult before most people owned a radio, he was nearly 40 before television, and he was simply never going to understand how to run the intercomm in his apartment building, even though he had 20 years to learn it.

My mom was a gadget person, and got her kids pocket calculators when they first came out, digital watches for christmas (back when they were LED, and you had to push a button to see the time so they wouldn't drain the battery), and is now a little old lady with a MacBook and a cell phone. But Dad was never into the gadgets, and is happy with a blender with mechanical buttons (rather than a million fancy settings), and he simply has no idea how a computer works beyond the abstract (it runs on electricty).

[Miyon]

I see it from a different side.
I know computers, I can rebuild one, install hardware, figure most software. Taught myself in one day how to setup a SQL database on my old guilds web page.

As for people that don't get/understand computers. Well lets see. My dad is a CPA, I couldn't figure out how to do my taxes if my life depended on it.

My brother-in law is a heart surgeon, I know a lot of schooling went into becoming a surgeon but I would take a guess the he isn't of low intelligence and he doesn't have a clue about his home computer.

My last job I worked Worker's Comp. I was known around the office as the one to ask if there is a computer problem. But no matter how smart they thought I was for my computer skills, it took me 6 months to learn most of what I needed to do the Worker's Comp job.

and it goes on like that. When I did tech support some people would comment on how smart I must be to know all this stuff. I always replied "I understand computers but I probably couldn't do your job without a lot of training"

'Elite' computer users are not always smarter, better, more competent then other people. We just know our job like other people do theirs.

[Broomjockey]

The way I see it, these are the "classes" of computer users:

Those who know nothing, and know it, and are "happy" that way(don't want to learn).
Those who know nothing, and don't know it, and can't be convinced differently.
Those who know nothing, want to learn, but can't get the hang of it.
Those who know nothing, want to learn, and can do so.

Those who know something, and think that's enough.
Those who know something, but think they know everything.
Those who know something, and want to learn more.
Those who knew something that's obsolete, but can't be convinced of that.

Those who know a lot, and think it's everything.
Those who know a lot, but don't want to admit it's not everything.
Those who know a lot, and want to learn more when they can.

You'll notice nowhere on that list is intelligence. It's all attitude and learning.

[crazylegs]

Others are more like my father, who's fairly convinced that his VCR and his microwave are conspiring agaisnt him, who dislikes anything that has a digital display, who can't be bothered to learn how the timer on his stove works (as that's a feature that doesn't interest him, and he has a perfectly good wind-up timer). The man took a course in using a computer once, and learned a great deal. Still, he is frustrated by (and frankly afraid of) any technological device that does things he didn't tell it to and doesn't want it to.
Explaining to him why or how a given fix works is pointless: he doesn't really believe you. He knows that how the machine works is beyond his comprehension, and he expects it will continue to thwart him by acting in unauthorized ways regardless of what you tell him to do.

I thought for a moment you were my sister describing my Father, then I realised your location and that made things slightly less likely!

[KellyHabersham]

"Those who know nothing, and know it, and are "happy" that way(don't want to learn)."

My mom definitely fits into this category. She doesn't have good typing skills, doesn't know much about word processing, and for reason refuses to learn (says she's too old). So, whenever she had to type up a paper for anything, she always insisted that I do it.

"Those who know nothing, want to learn, but can't get the hang of it."

Janet (a co-worker at the library who's recently quit) was, unfortunately, like this.....no matter how many times I showed her how to fill out/print a time card or other computer-related tasks in our work area, she never really got the hang of it.

[Anriana]

I see it from a different side.
I know computers, I can rebuild one, install hardware, figure most software. Taught myself in one day how to setup a SQL database on my old guilds web page.

As for people that don't get/understand computers. Well lets see. My dad is a CPA, I couldn't figure out how to do my taxes if my life depended on it.

My brother-in law is a heart surgeon, I know a lot of schooling went into becoming a surgeon but I would take a guess the he isn't of low intelligence and he doesn't have a clue about his home computer.

My last job I worked Worker's Comp. I was known around the office as the one to ask if there is a computer problem. But no matter how smart they thought I was for my computer skills, it took me 6 months to learn most of what I needed to do the Worker's Comp job.

and it goes on like that. When I did tech support some people would comment on how smart I must be to know all this stuff. I always replied "I understand computers but I probably couldn't do your job without a lot of training"

'Elite' computer users are not always smarter, better, more competent then other people. We just know our job like other people do theirs.

There's a difference between being an "elite" computer user and being an end user who has to be shown how to save a text document over and over and over and over.