Seriously!?!?!?

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/crazy-90-percent-of-people-dont-know-how-to-use-ctrl-f/243840/

90% of people don't know about CTRL+F! Imagine how much time they're wasting! I did a quick poll on CE, and this certainly isn't true on GameFAQs, but sheesh.

I looked into this because twice I've been treated like a computer genius for showing someone this, which I always find amusing.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton

Yep! The more popular computers get, the more important they are, and simultaneously, the less the average user understands them. Soon the computers will command us instead of the other way around. And we will thoroughly deserve it.

"Search anthropologist", huh? That's a good one.

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They say I'm just scared. Yes, I am scared. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

I believe it.

I just found out I have a friend who doesn't know how to use delete. He was like "wow. You can delete text without like... hitting backspace?" I'm sure the full implications of the keys' distinctions will hit him soon.

I also have a *number* of co-workers who can't wrap their mind around how e-mail searching works. Like conceptually, the idea of thinking of what terms to search to find information just utterly evades them.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir

By the way, for no reason clear to me, the bit of computer-related stupidity that enrages me the most is double-clicking on hyperlinks.

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They say I'm just scared. Yes, I am scared. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

I must have mentioned this guy before, but I have a guy who won't double-click on *anything*. He will only click once, then take his hand off the mouse and hit enter.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir

http://xkcd.com/763/
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Well, there is a new accent of n00b language. It's called: Vet LUEser goes Foreign!-MegaSpy22
Those must be the pants of the gods!-Digitalpython

LinkPrime1 posted...

http://xkcd.com/763/

ugh, how many times that.
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http://lostfacts.net/
I've looked at the world for quite a few years now and I've found that if I don't laugh, I'll probably end up crying.

My dad pulled me aside recently to demand why there are lots of swear words on the internet that come up if you search for my name on Hotmail.

I was never able to figure out what he was talking about (I assume it was Facebook, but I don't quite get how the one leads to the other) but the important part of the story is that I got yelled at for swearing on the internet.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir

I totally posted in this topic yesterday. Not sure where it went.

What I was saying was, I hope Kodi's wrong and that computers continue getting easier to use. I'd like, someday, for technicians to be obsolete.

I looked into this because twice I've been treated like a computer genius for showing someone this, which I always find amusing.

Now that I think about it, this reminds me of an episode of Whose Line I saw the other day in which Ryan, during a Wacky Newscasters segment, does the weather as a "magician who knows only stupid 'dad' tricks but performs them as if he's David Copperfield".

…I hope Kodi's wrong and that computers continue getting easier to use.

But my prediction is consistent with computers getting easier to use. The less people need to know in order to do simple things with computers, the less they'll learn, because they're lazy. As a microcosm of this, consider an anecdote I heard the other day of a kid trying an old video game and saying "How am I supposed to figure out this game? There's no tutorial!" Compare that with the twelve-year-olds of yesterday who booted up their brand-new TRS-80s to be greeted with a BASIC prompt.

I'd like, someday, for technicians to be obsolete.

Wouldn't that require strong AI? Unless by "technicians" you only mean relatively unskilled workers. We might be able to get rid of those, sure; the people who will be hard to replace are the people who design the fancy hardware and software to begin with.

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They say I'm just scared. Yes, I am scared. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

I understand why it would be nice for people to get to know computers better, but I don't necessarily see making computers easy enough to use without really understanding them a totally bad thing. I get the benefits of using a car with manual transmission, but I don't see the investment as personally worth the time for the return I'd get on it. I'm totally happy to pay farmers to grow food for me rather than spending time doing it myself. So I totally understand when people want their computers to be easy to use without having to spend much time learning to use them. I also think this is probably more efficient.

As a side note, this is almost certainly why Minecraft is more popular than Dwarf Fortress. Dwarf Fortress is, in theory, a much more interesting game with many more features, but it doesn't even pretend to hold your hand. Admittedly, it wouldn't be quite as deep if its developer had spent time making the UI better, rather than adding to the gameplay, but I think it would have provided much more entertainment, as it would have reached a far wider audience.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton

I agree in theory—I certainly don't want to have to understand how a refrigerator works just to keep my food cool—but in practice, people get into a lot of trouble for not understanding computers anyway. I think this has less to do with computers being more complicated or less user-friendly than refrigerators or cars than the fact that people actually want to do all sorts of things with computers, not just one or two highly specialized tasks. All you need to get out of a car is the ability to get from point A to point B. But the great thing about computers is that you can do all sorts of things with them, so, indeed, people try to do all sorts of things with them—an array of things wide enough that only language (human language or programming languages) is expressive enough to specify what one wants. To be clear, I don't see it as a problem that people don't understand computer hardware. The problem is that they don't know, for example, the basic ideas behind public-key cryptography, or the difference between plain text and Word documents.

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They say I'm just scared. Yes, I am scared. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

As a side note, this is almost certainly why Minecraft is more popular than Dwarf Fortress.

The difference between 3D graphics and ASCII art probably also has something to do with it.

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They say I'm just scared. Yes, I am scared. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

Yeah, the issue isn't that they fail to understand the underlying mechanisms.

To make a car analogy, imagine if people didn't know what turn signals did. They're very useful, and they save a lot of time (e.g. at four-way stops), and they help prevent some damage to properties and livelihoods, but they're not *essential* in the same way that the gas pedal is. You don't *need* to know how a turn signal works. But by God everyone should.

That's how I feel about double-clicking.

:iiaca:
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir