"I think I can speak for most of my generation in saying that computer classes in high schools, colleges, and community centers are universally worthless. Courses for young people are usually taught by out-of-touch adults with a much less advanced understanding of the things they're teaching than their students. The only kind of teacher likely to be more incompetent than a computer teacher is a gym teacher. But that's not the problem."
Our computer classes were actually given by our gym teacher...
When I was in middle school we had these awful typing classes. What I would do is copy paste lines of 0's and 1's to make a page of "binary code" then I'd print a few copies from a random printer in the room. The teacher would see it, think the printer was malfunctioning and turn it off. I'd do this throughout the class until every printer was switched off. Because printing the page of what we typed was part of the lesson once all the printers 'stopped working', the lesson was over and the only thing we could do was sit around and play Stunt Copter until the end of class.
In our typing class, the teacher would give us each a floppy that stored our progress, averages, and what typing tests we were working on. I got tired of doing the tests (I was practicing typing at home on my own), and I wanted to streamline the process. So I looked on the floppy, and found that while the file with your progress and average scores was stored in some kind of program specific encoding, the files that contained the typing tests chosen by the teacher for that day were text files. So before each test, I would quickly open the file in notepad and change the text to be just the letter "j" and nothing else. The program would start timing you when you typed the first letter and stop timing when you reached the last letter, so as soon as I hit "j" it would instantly register 120 words per minute, since that was the fastest it could measure.
Needless to say, the teacher was curious as to why I started getting 120 wpm on every test, so when she asked me I figure I'd just tell her the truth, and explained how I editted the file. She thought it was funny and creative, and (after I demonstrated that I really was learning how to type anyway) just gave me an A in the class.
I actually learned the most about programming in an optional class about electronic and magnetic fields.
We simulated magnetic or/and electric fields which behave correctly and to accomplish that we actually had to write code. Only a few lines, but all the basic concepts were there.
If not for the enthusiastic physics teacher that class would have never happened. All other (non-optional) computer classes were pretty dull. The teachers were either incompetent (not much knowledge) or lousy teachers (unable to teach their knowledge).
Interesting. As a contrast in Germany the gym teachers are usually quite competent and have to pass physical exams. (The computer science teachers less so..)
My middle-school computer class was "taught" (for sufficiently small values of the term) by the typewriting teacher. Because, you know, typewriters have keyboards and so do computers.
To her credit, she did not try to hide this fact from us.
The real problem is that these courses often teach a specific operating system or a specific office suite in an extremely facile manner. They're glorified typing courses. That means when Microsoft changes the locations of buttons in Word, students' knowledge is obsolete. Even programming courses in high school (and many colleges) are tied to specific programming languages, not general concepts. A good course teaches a mix of theory and application, but most computer courses can't even handle application right.
This bothers me a lot. Not only are lots of "computer literacy" courses teaching stuff that will one day be trivia, but lots of supposed Computer Science education is over involved with particular programming language trivia. Heck, a lot of hiring nowadays is over-involved with such trivia.
Contrast this with stuff that kids do with eToys in Squeak. Kids using an "Object-paint" program to simultaneously explore vector algebra, programming, and robotics, without the words "vector" and "robots" even needing to be mentioned.
Get the mechanics out of the way so our minds can get on with the essentials.
In the 80s I learned more from pirating software on a Commodore 64 than I did in computer classes in school. I got the skill of figuring out a piece of software with no help or documentation.
The computer equivalent of "teaching a man to fish" I suppose. Shame schools don't teach exploration and play with computers.
That's what happened to me when I was 11. My dad brought home an apple IIe and some manuals. I saved my allowance and bought a 300 baud zoom modem and 4 years later "The Authorities" came banging on the door at 3 a.m and confiscated my precious Apple and all my notes.
Moral of the story: I'm now a professional member of the I.T. Industry
What we aren't seeing is the number of Facebook users who either a) don't use Google to find Facebook every time they log in or b) do use Google but figured out right away that RRW is not Facebook.
The problem with such epic n00bs, though, is that there are so many of them that the "survivors" alone can destabilize your business.
Heck, without noobs, would we even have spam? Somebody is paying those people to make it worthwhile. The tiny fraction of the world that encourages spammers cost everyone else massive amounts of time and energy and money accounting for or fixing their errors.
Well, then they wouldn't be n00bs then, would they?
I don't see how it's survivorship "bias" when the entire topic of discussion is only those people who fit a certain classification. That's not bias, that's just the topic.
When I lived in Ohio, my best friend at the time was a regular weekly commentator on a local public radio station. She was pretty sharp in a lot of ways, but computers still confused her. She wrote a lot and used Microsoft Word a lot, but she was never ever clear on what the Hard Drive was in her computer. And why should she be? Her life was busy enough with her job, her hobbies, and her family. So long as her writing was there for her when she sat down to write again, that's really all she wanted and needed.
Users shouldn't need to care what a Hard Drive is. Their lives are not necessarily enriched if they know about the structure of a URL. That's as much an arbitrary, throwaway bit of knowledge as knowing the exact sequence of menus/commands needed to turn on endnotes in Word 2003.
Those who enable users or unburden their minds will make money.
(In retrospect, I should've done things to make the thing visible. I should've taken the thing apart and showed her the hard drive, the RAM. Then my "File Cabinet/Desk" metaphor might've had something concrete for her to latch onto. As it was, she was smart enough to figure out all those Windows icons were just convenient fictions.)
>Their lives are not necessarily enriched if they know about the structure of a URL. That's as much an arbitrary, throwaway bit of knowledge as knowing the exact sequence of menus/commands needed to turn on endnotes in Word 2003.
That's absurd. Knowing URL structure (or enough about it to figure out what site you're on) is something that is necessary to use the internet. Phishing scams are the obvious reason, but also for things like this where that little bit of knowledge make the difference between success and failure.
But I think it's fine for the difficulty of telling a machine to do something complex to be proportionate with the complexity and specificity of that task.
So if I were making a photo album and I really wanted to tell the computer to put photos in a certain place on the page (instead of where it put them), I should have to articulate that fact in some way to the computer. Nothing is going to save me from having to clarify my thoughts to myself, and there's a certain limit to how easy we can make having to clarify that thought to the computer. I think dragging a mouse is pretty good, but maybe we'll have telepathic interfaces.
What about websites and URLs? You're sitting in front of a machine millions of times more powerful than the computers used to send men to the moon and asking it to send encrypted payment information across a vast network of other such nodes around the world to your financial institution. That's pretty crazy! I think it's a marvel that average people with no special education on the topic manage to do this every week. I wonder how nicely we could smooth it over further without making it unintentionally more confusing.
Not absurd at all. There are countless community colleges that have courses that cover both URL structure and such sequences of menus/commands in Word. But is it any kind of deep knowledge?
Since so many people use both web browsers and Microsoft Word, such knowledge could even help you to get a job. But is it any kind of deep or essential knowledge? Does anyone care about the structure of addresses for VideoTex? Does anyone care about the layout of menus and screens in the old AOL client? How about setting up privacy settings in Friendster? Yes, a few people still care, but almost everyone will recognize that this is all really just trivia now. But once upon a time, this was really useful information.
Yes, URL structure is currently necessary to use the internet as we know it today. But it's every bit as arbitrary as the width of the standard rail gauge.
Math is deep knowledge. Physics or chemistry is deep knowledge. URL structure is trivia. A lot of people who don't pay attention to it are actually smart enough to recognize it as such. They have other things to think about.
So because the technology may change at some point in the future, there's no reason to learn it now? Nobody should have bothered learning how to use a fountain pen, because they should have known ballpoints would be around eventually?
If you want to use the Internet, you should at least know a little bit about how information is addressed. Would you consider it acceptable to spend a couple hours in the library every day but still not know what the Dewey Decimal System is? This facebook login thing is like you went to the library every day for the same book, but instead of learning its location in the shelf, you ask the librarian and blindly grab the book he points at--in this case, he pointed to the book next to yours. Hey, this book used to be about Tom Sawyer--why did they change it to be about a jumping frog?
Nobody should have bothered learning how to use a fountain pen, because they should have known ballpoints would be around eventually?
Notice that nobody cares about nib maintenance anymore, and that ballpoints made fortunes before they became commoditized. Those fortunes were made by innovators who could tell the essentials from trivia and mechanics.
Would you consider it acceptable to spend a couple hours in the library every day but still not know what the Dewey Decimal System is?
Since we have computerized indexing, one could just go to serial numbers and not lose a bit of functionality. Physical browsing would lose out, but that's hardly a loss of essential function. Cover Flow shows how this could be replaced and enhanced. Lots of librarians are actually wrestling with such implications. Just one example:
This facebook login thing is like you went to the library every day for the same book, but instead of learning its location in the shelf, you ask the librarian and blindly grab the book he points at
Your analogy falls down. URLs are much farther from everyday reality than objects like books. The level of abstraction is different, which is the essential point.
URLs are much farther from everyday reality than objects like books
I should point out that the reverse is true for many people these days, and will be true for many more in the future. The digital revolution is creating a new reality, methinks, and it behooves a citizen of the times to learn how to get around in both. :)
The digital revolution is creating a new reality, methinks, and it behooves a citizen of the times to learn how to get around in both. :)
This is like touting the immense possibilities of a brave new, literate world, but then emphasizing one should brush up on their wet tablet cuneiform skills.
The first part hits the essence of the revolution. The second part is mired in implementation triviality.
By that token, law is also trivia. The thing is, how successful do you think the internet is going to be? It has, within a few decades, permeated almost every aspect of our lives, and it seems set to get even bigger. An analogy in human history would be, say, society itself. Before that, people lived in isolated subsistence-level, hunter-gatherer tribes. When bigger societies emerged, a member of such a tribe could have made the argument that knowing the rules of such a society was useless trivia because it wasn't really useful, as opposed to knowing how to hunt and recognize berries that aren't poisonous. These tribes either integrated into larger societies or became extinct.
Needless to say, I do not know the future of human civilization or whether the internet will continue to be important or even retain the same structure, but it seems reasonable to suppose that it will, because as more technology is built on top of it or that utilizes it (all our computers and mobile devices, web apps, etc), it becomes more indispensable, subject to the emergence of disruptive substitutes.
Forgive this rambling comment, but I have a point, which is this: I think that as more widely-used abstractions are built on top of a basic structure, this structure becomes an increasingly important reality unto itself and the mechanics of it become deep knowledge, at least where us humans are concerned. Also, I would point out that though I agree with you on math, physics and chemistry, to most people, those are useless trivia too.
I agree, I almost can't remember the last time I even bothered to look at a url...two weeks ago? a month? For the most part, the address bar is a meaningless mash of characters I can pretty safely ignore 95% of the time.
> Users shouldn't need to care what a Hard Drive is.
In theory, they ought not need to, but as currently constructed, they do need to because hard drives are terribly unreliable, and people expect to rely on them. If you explain to them that their thesis is being stored inside a little box that has a few discs of thin aluminium covered in rust and that they're being spun in space 5000 times a minute, then just sometimes they understand why they ought to have some sort of backup strategy. Some people will take your advice without understanding but most are skeptical of inconvenient claims and won't act without understanding.
It's like people shouldn't have to understand anything beyond that their car has a 'stop pedal'. But it's still really important for people to understand that they have brakes in their car, that the breaks wear out, don't work well in some kinds of conditions, and make certain sounds when they need fixing.
Sub-optimal conditions both, but a necessary artifact of current levels of technology. Now, ABS systems have reduced some of that wet-weather cognitive load with software. Online backup services are a start in that direction for hard drives. But until it comes as part of the built-in price of the computer (that is a sellable feature) and high-speed Internet is pervasive, people still need to worry about it. At least until dual SSD's are standard equipment.
Much as I'm in favour of people understanding the structure of URLs, the article is wrong suggest this is the best way to prevent bank phishing. The correct advice is to bookmark your bank login URL, if your bank is competent this should be an https address, and always reach your login page using this bookmark. Never click a link in an email to login to your bank, it requires a great deal of effort and skill to check an emailed URL is valid.
And your bank makes it hard for you! Chase Bank sent me a (legitimate!) email this week saying "We've just intercepted a suspicious transaction and tried reaching you by phone but we couldn't. Please click here if you authorized it or click here if you didn't." And then the link threw up a security certificate error! If they hadn't had my name, four digits of my account number, and a number exactly matching the number Google had just emailed me to say "We tried charging you $523.25 for your AdWords account but it got denied by your bank" 2 hours earlier, I would have sworn it was the world's best phishing attempt.
Nice article, and I think it does a decent job explaining the point and the problems. I, personally, side with the education-solution, as excessive computer ignorance is a very real danger and much more applicable to most people than most things school attempts to teach.
In all seriousness, this seems like the perfect place to use the StupidFilter (http://stupidfilter.org). Separate bugs and complaints as they did (bug-tracking system instead of emails), and run all complaints through the filter. I'd even recommend informing people that it'll be run through the filter; anyone who can read before they scream at you can test for themselves to make sure it passes. If they can't be understandable and can't read before yelling, they're not worth the time, because nothing you do will make all of them happy. As the article suggests, pick your battles.
People want tools to solve problems, really to address their pains in life. These can include being bored and wanting to have some fun (hence Farmville), keeping in contact with people, managing their money, doing heir work, etc.
Most people are motivated enough to learn what they need to to address their pains and very little beyond that, partially because there is so much vying for our time and attention.
I know computers, but I don't know cars yet I drive because it addresses many of my needs. I know mostly as much about a car as I need to. Learning more about it does not satisfy other needs of mine (I don't find them interesting, so they don't satisfy my curiosity needs). I would sound as stupid answering car questions as the NYC people on the street did answering Browser questions.
So, do I need to learn more about cars or do computers need to work right for people who don't understand them?
We get traffic for 'Facebook down', 'Facebook login' and, my favourite, 'Google search'. "lalala, I'm going to Google and searching for Google search and then clicking on an unrelated link."
This is a fantastic post, esp if you're like me - a geek that studied philosophy.
I think the best part of this article is the discussion of the ability to learn new abstractions. When I decide I want to file a patent, I go and learn about the patent system. Same with the Unix command line, the bus system in a foreign country, or how to go to a gym for free when traveling (most will let 'prospective members' workout once free).
My sister on the other hand probably hasn't learned a new abstraction since down-dog in yoga, and struggles with the fact that if she doesn't file a tax return, she faces huge fines. I still love her to death, and will endlessly redesign my website until it is intuitive for her.
A section about the trouble hierarchical information layout causes, in an article posted on (and written about) the web, is interesting, since some of the early motivations for hypertext were precisely the feeling that hierarchical structures and navigation were unintuitive and limiting, and that instead links between relevant stuff should be the main abstraction. Ted Nelson in particular seems to see eliminating hierarchies in computation as sort of a holy war.
The thing is that most people don't even try. This is partially our fault; people are just expected to grab a computer and automatically understand things, and as a group software developers really should start things off with an introduction.
However, in my experience, most people are not willing to learn about their computers if you give them the chance. They're entirely apathetic about the whole deal. They don't care about anything, they just want to get Facebook and Farmville and be done with it. From this perspective, the iPad is _too_ open, and should come with a pre-programmed list of allowed domains to prevent phishing or other scams.
> However, in my experience, most people are not willing to learn about their computers if you give them the chance.
I didn't understand this in the past, but I notice now that it all depends on what you really care about. For example, I know more about computers than a lot of people. However, I don't know anything about the phone system that my company is using. It has functionality that could make my life easier, but it has a lot of menus that I am not interested in learning. So, I just use it in the worst way possible, and that is fine for me. I don't care about learning what protocols this phone can use or what additional functions I can enable, because what I care is working with software. Most people feel just like this with all computers. They just want to get their stuff done as quickly as possible and get out of the way.
What's interesting is that they're willing to take the time to figure out Facebook and Farmville, and they seem to relish the frustration they bring on themselves by not paying attention to the whole process, but rather just the end result.
Just think how much time they'd save, time they could be playing Farmville, if they used things like bookmarks, or set their home page properly (to Facebook, perhaps), or any of the other features and tools that are actually designed to make their experience easier, faster, and more efficient.
they're willing to take the time to figure out Facebook and Farmville
I'm telling you: give your computers game mechanics to learn your app. Facebook should buy you a pig and give you a diploma if you figure out how to log into them without Google. It would solve the problem in a week. (Test first, obviously.)
Heck, Facebook could make a "user education tithe" of virtual goodies a condition of being listed in their programs. Got 1M users and want more? Pony up goodies for us to expand the platform with. It is in your long-term best interests. It is in your short-term best interests, too, if your short-term future would be compromised by us turning your notifications off.
The thing is, they're only interested in the end result.
Or, let me put it this way: the "end result" is what most people want and will pay money for!
Why should a Facebook user be interested in the structure of a URL? Why should someone who uses a word processor be interested in hard drives? Isn't that like expecting all drivers to know the mole-fraction of pentane in their summer fuel blend? Drivers shouldn't need to know a whole lot about their cars. A lot of drivers would rather not know. They just want to get where they are going. A lot of companies that realized this made their shareholders tons of money in the past several decades.
not paying attention to the whole process, but rather just the end result
Is that so wrong when the "whole process" is frequently opaque, confusing, error-prone, poorly explained, and irrelevant to the task at hand? Be aware that you're subject to a cognitive bias: You find computers inherently interesting and worthy of attention. (You wouldn't be here if you didn't.) Other people, perhaps people whose initial experiences with computers are unlike yours, do not feel the same way and do not have the same intuitive sense that the "whole process" is worth attending to that you do.
That is to say you have something like hindsight--it's obvious to you, bearer of a certain understanding, but to someone who doesn't know what you know, it isn't obvious what things they should be paying more attention to or what specific things they need to understand. Too often we think "They should know more about computers", which is very vague and ignores all of the things that people do tend to learn quite well.
Your understanding comes from years of built-up cognitive models about how these things work. The thing is: So does theirs. Like you, they've built a model that works well enough to do what they want to do. The difference is that they've learned things like "If I meddle with things I don't understand, I might break something." and "If I break this computer, I won't be able to fix it." and "If I can't fix it, I will feel stupid and have to ask or pay for help." These are maladaptive (though too often true), but they are still learned things, and I think it's a big mistake to ignore them when thinking about why users seem to be unwilling to learn other things.
...tools that are actually designed to make their experience easier, faster, and more efficient.
Those features and tools are not perfect. They fail. But form follows failure, which is why for instance several browsers now default to an interface that shows screenshots of frequently-used sites (the others all default to search pages). This accomplishes the approximately same thing as bookmarking or setting a home page without user action at all, and without relying on page titles or URLs for recognition. In time, the ways that this fails will become evident, too.
Bear in mind, too, that unless they have some specific motivation or inspiration for change, people are more prone to do what they know works than to experiment for the sake of it. The RWW story is particularly relevant because of the often ignored detail that what those users were trying to do (Google for "facebook login") actually works most of the time. Until a series of basically reasonable assumptions failed, they had no intrinsic reason to do things differently.
His proposed curriculum sounds very similar to the one used by Fairmont High in Verner Vinge's Rainbows End http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End. Fairmont High was actually the current equivalent of a Trade School.
Usability testing would solve a lot of problems. I don't know how many apps get tested with the help of real world users, but I think there is still room for improvement.
I agree, but I don't think that was the focus of this article. No amount of usability testing would have helped here. RWW and Facebook already look completely different - not the URL, the entire page!
The same goes for any other application. The user doesn't have an appropriate "mental model" of how the computer works. What is an app developer to do at that point?
Does anyone else dismiss this phenomenon as just a generation misusing an interactive medium? I think the "noob" label is misleading given the scope of the problem.
"The first line of defense is to make sure that people who do have a clue can get help with their problems easily without having to contact you. If all your emails are from wackos with hopelessly dumb questions, that means you're doing things right!"
I learned something: improve my documentation, videotutorials and all until that happens.
Our computer classes were actually given by our gym teacher...