Black Magic
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| random May 17, 2006 9:13 AM EDT |
Interesting article. I think even now the human mind is still very primitive. People believe what they believe. I think it's a great point that people would be much more comfortable with much more information. The problem is people don't know what's going on "under the hood." They're reduced to making guesses and profiling by applying what they know already. If they know absolutely nothing about a modern PC, it's going to be a rough start. You could apply this to anything. People don't immediately go to the doctor because they self-diagnose it as no big deal. It will go away like everything else has. People don't rush to the mechanic when they hear strange noises because they don't know what's causing the noise. People don't know how to fix their own PCs (or even know how to articulate the problem) because they don't know how it works. For a lot (most?) the PC is simply a tool. They have a task that can be done much faster, cleaner, cheaper, whatever on the PC. They don't care how a BIOS works. They don't care about codecs and formats and components and all the other absolute nonsense we put up with. So now, we have users who want it to just work and makers (of PCs, software, whatever) who just want to get it into homes, businesses, etc. So they make it as seamless as they can. But because of that seamlessness, it makes it harder to know what's going on under the hood. In the article it mentioned a pop-up and a newbie asking why that didn't didn't install the product directly. I think that's where seamlessness is a bit of a problem (er, maybe there's a better example than hapless users wanting to directly install programs from pop-ups). Advertising is generally made to be off to the side. At the top and/or sides of a web page or newspaper. In between TV shows. Now they get a pop-up which may or may not resemble a dialog box. A local dialog box asking to install something will install something. A web "dialog box" asking to install something could just be an advertisement. Where they have to go the site. And download something. Don't forget to register. Oh, and it only works for a few days before you have to pay. And that's not even what we call 'malicious'. So, from one side, makers are trying to simplify these systems and processes so that users don't need to know how it works. But because they don't know, they can't fix it and will probably have trouble trying to explain to someone who can help. And then it's possible it will happen to them again. Then from the other side, we have malicious programs that take advantage of the fact that users won't know what the hell they're doing. I sincerely think people are not as stupid as others assume they are. They just don't have all the information. Information needs to be free. |
| jimf May 17, 2006 10:15 AM EDT |
>"I sincerely think people are not as stupid as others assume they are" I'd like to believe that too... Experience tells me otherwise. |
| grouch May 17, 2006 11:57 AM EDT |
>'A local dialog box asking to install something will install something. A web "dialog box" asking to install something could just be an advertisement.' Remember integration of the browser and the desktop? The grand scheme was to make it irrelevant whether data resides on your hard drive or remotely. That kind of twisted version of NFS leads to the confusion between what's a web dialog box and a local dialog box. Web sites are magically part of the local desktop, no longer confined to the strange "My Internet". It's much worse than simply a lack of information. It's deliberate misinformation. |
| dcparris May 17, 2006 3:51 PM EDT |
>>"I sincerely think people are not as stupid as others assume they are" >I'd like to believe that too... Experience tells me otherwise. I just can't help but wonder if we're all as stupid as we're allowed to be? Call it "Don's Theory of Situational Stupidity... |
| jimf May 17, 2006 3:56 PM EDT |
>I just can't help but wonder if we're all as stupid as we're allowed to be? if you say 'as we allow ourselves to be', I might buy into that. |
| dcparris May 18, 2006 5:04 PM EDT |
> if you say 'as we allow ourselves to be', I might buy into that. That too. |
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