| Monday, May 13, 2002 |
11:35 - Computer Literacy™
http://www.mymac.com/mccormick/5.13.02.shtml
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I don't know if the story related in this article is apocryphal or not-- after all, I have a hard time believing that anybody, even an IT kid who spends all his time at home playing Dark Age of Camelot and launching DDOS attacks against anybody who defeats him, could be this openly hateful (especially in a work environment). But be that as it may, the article presents a valid point, one that I've made here before: that much of the politics of the computer world stems from the rift between those who believe that computer literacy is a sacred arcane trust that only an elite few should have-- and those who appreciate ease-of-use and system design that does not require computer literacy.
He'd never share how he had set up the dual monitors so I never asked. Had I asked I would have been figuratively beaten with his Computer Literacy. He was just hateful. Just like his older counterparts he had figured out that knowledge was power. He liked having power and he liked bullying any and everyone with it.
Windows just might be a fine platform but when you come across people so spiteful and so mean, no wonder they like keeping others in the dark. No wonder they hate the thought of a Macintosh where a user can do all that they want without the aide of their "computer literacy."
This was certainly a lot truer Back In the Day-- back when PCs had DOS and Macs had... well, the Mac OS. Back when you heard people say "The Mac is a toy" because they truly believed that computers should be hard to use-- and that graphical icon-based user interfaces were not just anathema, but poised to bring about the end of the world as we knew it. It's that same mentality that managed to take the fact that Macs natively supported 24-bit color when the best you could do on the PC was EGA graphics, and turn it into a liability for Mac users. "We don't need all that fancy color depth! Only computer illiterates need more than 16 colors!"
And even though Windows now incorporates all the most despised advantages that the Mac always had-- full color support, no more 640K barrier, icons, windows, a mouse-- Windows bigots, like the one in the article (and like the guy that Lileks butted horns with a couple of months ago), will scoff at Mac innovations like digital-video editing, DVD burning, wireless networking, and FireWire, and jeer about how "no real computer user would want to do that!"
I confess I've felt the urge to espouse that same stance-- I still do, on occasion, every time some AOLer puts "www." at the beginning of their e-mail address or sends me a message without realizing that their e-mail is set to return a NOT ACCEPTING MESSAGES FROM THIS SENDER message to me when I reply. I recall that back in 1996, when I was working for Pacific Internet, my co-workers and I would lament the fact that new ISP customers were coming in hoping to sign up for Internet accounts without even having set up the brand-new computer their son had just gotten them for Christmas yet. Time was, we recalled, that on our sign-up form we could say "Please be sure that you have at least six months' experience using computers, and be familiar with how to install applications and change system settings." Time was, we could expect ever single walk-in customer to have that kind of literacy. We could tell them "Open up the TCP/IP control panel", and they would have it done in seconds-- not like now, we'd say, when you have to explain to them how to click the mouse and what happens when you press the Start menu button.
AOL did have a killer-app of an idea: make their software so simple that that untapped well of millions and millions of potential customers would not be intimidated by the specter of having to have Computer Literacy in order to get on the Internet.
A similar view of the same political stance is visible in the Linux community. It's sour grapes, pure and simple: user interface design is really hard, and so is developing corporate buy-in for application support; so when Linux fails to provide a consistent and comprehensive desktop environment (KDE and GNOME are good contenders, but...) or decent commercial applications, the proponents respond by getting haughty. "A real computer is command-line only!" "Open-source software does everything that commercial software can do, and better!" "The only reason we don't support that hardware is that the company won't release their driver code for free! Damn them!"
It strikes me that anybody who takes an elitist view toward computer literacy is clinging to dogma-- not unlike the hard-line Islamicists, they shun the advances of "the dark side" by puffing themselves up with assurance of their own righteousness. If the other side is winning, it can only be because they're evil and/or cheating. Hoard your increasingly irrelevant knowledge and jealously guard it, because then-- though you may end up suffering in the here-and-now-- at least you'll be judged worthy when the Reckoning comes.
I dunno-- seems to me that it's an unwillingness to compromise that will only lead to self-immolation.
I'm glad that I use a Mac. I'm also glad that I maintain a certain amount of cross platform computer literacy. Not so I can use it as a club but as something that helps me help others. I often am vocal about the Macs' abilities but I'm not so blind as to believe they are the only real computers.
Maybe that's why Windows is hard and Macs are shunned. It's the people. Ironically, maybe that's why Macs are also easier.
Write an article about "Windows bigots", and the immediate visceral response is to wonder whether we're being "Mac bigots". Well, I like to think I'm a bit more realistic than that. Sure, you can chastise me by saying that all viewpoints are equally valid, that it's all a matter of what you were raised with, that the only reason I prefer Macs is because it's what I know, just as I'm dragging my heels over learning Python because I'm running on a pretty lean mixture when it comes to Perl-- it's what I know, and I know it well. (Which isn't to say that I don't know Windows, or Linux, or FreeBSD for that matter. I like to consider myself pretty well informed.)
But you know, if the last few months of world events have taught us anything, it should be that some viewpoints are better than others. Some cultures do have more merit in the context of the greater good of humanity than others. Some ideas are inherently superior to others.
I daresay I'm happier in my computing life than this IT kid is.
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