This idea came to me after a Technology lesson, when many of my classmates were baffled and surprised at the fact the teacher had made a (truthfully adequate) tutorial video to show them how to use ProDesktop. They were all like "Wow - how did you do that!!", "That's amazing, that man must be a genius" and "...woo!". Frankly I wasn't so impressed.
It occurred to me that many of these people claiming they're all in the "cloud" and are Facebook/MySpace junkies don't actually know a thing about the general interwebs and technology. If I were to go out and ask a person on the street who Jason Calacanis or Kevin Rose was, I can bet that they wouldn't know who they were. (By the way - Jason Calacanis is the CEO of Mahalo.com: Human Powered Search and Kevin Rose is a head honcho behind Revision3.com and Digg.com). Similarly, if I asked someone what Twitter or Plurk is, I suspect they wouldn't know. (Twitter and Plurk are both sites where you can tell people what you're doing/what you think of stuff.)
The same goes for hardware. I can easily slip into a conversation about graphics cards or processors, and continue talking about them for some hours. However when someone comes up to me and asks for help - either with software or hardware, they are usually unable to explain, there and then what is wrong -
Classmate: "Err the thingy-magigy that makes words appear on the computer screen doesn't work",
Me: "You mean the when you type on the keyboard, the words don't appear on the VDU?",
Classmate: "Ahem... err... doesn't matter - I think I can sort it out..."
--or--
Classmate: "You know...hehe... I have Windows Vista - the best operating system ever!
Me: "Ever heard of Mac OSX Leopard??!"
Classmate: "Who?"
Also when I see people with iPods and phones I know they don't actually know how to operate them - they just read the manual and learn the basics. I see a couple of older students with iPod Touches and they don't know that a new 2.0 Firmware upgrade will be coming out in July meaning they can play 3D games on their Touch, they are the kind of people who complain and leave something just because they haven't upgraded and got the new features.
Overall I think that many people, especially teenagers, are seriously "backward" in terms of the new age of the Internet and the cloud (I know many older bloggers like Scoble and Dvorak who are more up to date than most of my classmates). I think many need to read up on new things and move away from their hubs and cliques on Facebook and Bebo and explore the world of the interwebs. After all, when many of them were born they had hardly any of the opportunities they have today - No Google = no easy search, no WikiPedia = no easy research, no iTunes = no easy music downloads and no MSN/GTalk/AIM = no IM or Email. In fact one of my classmates is so stup.... obtuse that they think WikiPedia is called "Wilk-a-pedia"... My point proven.
3 comments:
you seem like a smart kid that has found something he is passionate about, my guess is that thing is technology and its impact on people.
one thing that will be important for you to understand as this passion grows is that there are a lot more people out there that use technology (ipods, internet, computers, etc.) that simply use them as a device to access something they love and could care less about the thing they are "holding in their hands" that gave them that access in the first place. and at the end of the day, that is OK. in fact, these people that irk you so much are critical. if it wasnt for the casual user, all the things we talk about would be just that, talk. it is the casual user that powers the web as we know it.
sure, the kevin rose's and scobles of the world have just as much impact on the future of such things, but no one would care about them if the casual user didn't engage (unknowingly most of the time) with they stuff the create and talk about.
so don't let it get to you. and more important, don't let it keep you from sharing what you know with people that don't know.
matthew proctor, i have just read that blog out to meghan o'connor over the phone.
We think you are truly amazing.
We salut you sexy.
See you later jugs.
xxxxx
oh btw from dom.
ha.
it is actually really good.
xx
Post a Comment