[9318] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
The annointed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Wed Dec 29 01:22:43 1993
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1993 01:21:57 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: mains@lmic.state.mn.us
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Sheldon Mains 612-297-2376's message of Tue, 28 Dec 1993 13:09:11 -0600 <9312281909.AA25552@host-natasha.lmic.state.mn.us>
>From: mains@lmic.state.mn.us (Sheldon Mains 612-297-2376)
>There has been a number of postings that seem to imply that the people on
>internet now are better than those who could come on in the future.
>Examples include the assertion that UNIX is fine and anyone on the net
>should know it to the complaint that those who buy "Internet in a Box" will
>not bring anything to the net nor know that they should.
Well, what happened with that fortunately very short discussion was
that some people were referring to setting up SLIP and similar, and
others just interactive usage (dial-in to a Unix system), so things
got conflated quickly.
>First, for something like internet to survive the changes in the industry,
>there has to be more than just computer junkies, academics and government
>types on it.
That happened a while ago.
I assure you the vast majority of the several thousand people on my
system don't fit any of the above descriptions. And I'm sure I'm not
unusual in mix for these sorts of systems, even if we're on the large
side customer-wise for this sort of operation.
>Third, the system has to be easier to use. How many of your friends can
>not program their VCR?--and we expect them to understand UNIX, let alone
>DOS?
These thoughts don't follow, even if they might seem to.
In the first place, I don't know how many of my friends can not
program their VCR, particularly beyond those who also don't care a
whole lot. I'm roughly in that category, I can sort of stumble thru
with the manual in my lap but in the last ten years I've probably
programmed my VCR twice, and I couldn't care less really. But it's not
shocking I'm still kinda clueless on the topic.
I also have little to no patience for fancy phone systems, photocopy
machines, etc. I still can't remember how to transfer a call on our
office phone system, the information falls out of my head microseconds
after someone shows me.
And hey, I'm probably safe in describing myself as a bona-fide
computer wizard.
So where's the relationship? Not much.
And on the other side of the coin, I don't see any real relationship
between people who can basically use Unix or DOS to get what they want
to do done, and enjoy it, and their ability to deal with household
appliances. Other than it being a cute-sounding comment (can't program
their VCR then certainly can't learn Unix or DOS) I know of no way to
make that leap more concretely.
Would you wager that you could *predict* a person's inherent ability
to learn e-mail, gopher, etc based on information only measuring their
ability with VCRs? I doubt it.
"Understand" is an overstatement. Most people don't "understand" the
phone system, even quite a few basic things, but they can *use* a
phone well enough to do what they want to do. Someone doesn't have to
be able to use every whiz-bang feature of unix (or DOS) just to be
able to remember how to type "pine" for e-mail, gopher to hunt about,
and "nn" (or whatever) to read newsgroups.
Can we make it better? Yeah, we can! But I like to think of that as
*better*, more productive, easier to find features you don't use
often, etc, not that I'm just catering to the stupid.
Anyhow, like I've said before (and I mean for over a decade), people
who make comments claiming that they have some kind of insight into
what people can or cannot learn and make use of are suspect. I've
rarely heard anyone be able to state anything deeper than "it just
feels that way to me".
I still believe there is a thread of elitism in much of the "but they
couldn't learn *unix* (whatever)" comments that's not very well hidden
by the coos of kindness.
I remember years ago when people told me that we couldn't put
secretaries on Unix to do word processing (i.e. get them off
typewriters) cuz secretaries were too dumb to have a chance.
We did it anyhow (I mean what's the harm? and we didn't really have
anything else), and boy-o-boy did they figure it out once they
realized it meant the end of re-typing 50 page documents in entirety
to incorporate a few last minute changes.
Heck, I ended up spending a lot of my time helping them debug their
rather sophisticated troff macros they had built as a group effort
without any of us knowing it to automate their own tedia. yow. And in
the past 15 years or thereabouts I've seen that sort of thing happen
over and over. Heck, I've even seen tenured CS faculty figure out how
to use e-mail, I've seen everything!
I claim learning most technologies has very little to do with some
19th century notion of inherent ability (particularly when it's
"predicted" based on what really is social status/class, the whole
thing always sounds so much like Shaw's "Pygmalion" to me when people
start babbling about it), and a *lot* to do with motivation to get
some particular task done.
I don't know what people are capable of learning if they want to.
Whenever I think I do know I go watch a five year old use the
telephone, microwave ovens, complicated TV systems, etc, perfectly
adequately and then I stop believing I know anything about the
subject. All I believe is that people care less to learn some things
(interfaces) than others.
>Finally, any step that gets more people to understand the value of two-way
>electrionic communications as opposed to the one-way model of broadcast TV
>and cable, is useful. So what if nbc.com is only e-mail, it is better
>than nothing.
That wasn't the point.
The point was it was part of a show on this wonderful superhighway and
all the opportunities etc being touted on NBC news, and I just thought
it slightly ironic that particular multi-billion dollar company hasn't
bothered to hook up better than a minor e-mail drop.
I thought it said something about the state of the dream vs the
reality.
-Barry Shein
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