While this video doesn’t have much to do with explaining technology, it’s still a wonderful explanation. I appreciate it because, as an author and consultant, I do write a quite a bit and have always wondered where these common abbreviations find their origin.
If you know someone who would benefit from embracing a new technology but seems strangely resistant, here are four important techniques to try.
1. Help them overcome fear.
Resistance is usually due to fear (though it can also be because someone doesn’t see any need for or value in the technology). Like I’ve said previously, you need to show them that fear is normal, that many people have such fears, and that most have overcome them with great success. (Bill Sleepers has a great success story resulting from the determination to “push in.”) Making a logical or legal argument won’t help; newcomers want emotional support. Knowing that experimentation and even failure is okay helps disarm the fright.
2. Help them understand.
People won’t trust magic, but not everyone wants the full tour of all facets of a technology. Tailor your explanations to the point they’re comfortable and don’t give them more at that point. They might be ready for more depth later, but restrain yourself in the near term for their own good.
At some point, each new adopter must make the decision to take their own steps. Let them fly on their own. Hand-holding may be a great way to start, but you don’t want to become a crutch that cripples a newcomer’s ability to blossom into a self-sufficient user.
Remember, everyone’s needs aren’t the same. That means their needs and uses for a technology may differ from yours. Not everyone needs the most sophisticated firewall and anti-virus software. Remember that just because you embrace certain technologies, they may want a different depth in how and what they embrace. Some people don’t want to have a Facebook account. Some people don’t like text messaging. Some don’t want to try to make a video akin to a major motion pictures with their new video editing software; they might just want to add music and titles to a few photos and video clips.
If you can take a skeptic to the point they’re no longer afraid and understand the technology enough to make the choice to embrace it, you then have to be willing to let go a little bit so that they can decide for themselves how to integrate the technology into their life.
4. Encourage them to keep learning.
Technology keeps moving, and especially for some older adopters, the pace will be unexpected. Again, they might not need to hang on every tech announcement, but they’ll need to know that what they’ve chosen to embrace will continue to evolve and may eventually morph into something else entirely. These are hard lessons for newcomers, but that shock can be mitigated by preparing them for the need to continue learning and growing with the technology marketplace.
The above four were the fundamental tenants upon which my book (The Ultimate PC Primer: 15 Simple Lessons for Understanding Personal Computers) was written, intended to help newcomers — scared, skeptical, and stubborn — learn to understand and embrace personal computing. However, these four techniques can be applied to any technology and used with newcomers of all ages.
Know someone too scared to embrace a new technology? Wondering how you can help them get beyond the fear to the benefits? Let’s talk about doing battle with technology adoption enemy number one: fear.
I’ll be the first to admit, many technologies — computers especially — seem scary, complex, and in some ways, intelligent. Newcomers might even perceive that level of sophistication like a foe or enemy force. I remember well how daunting personal computing was for me to willingly engage. In hindsight, it seems silly for me to have been so worried about a machine. But my perceived inadequacy and lack of knowledge about the subject made it feel very real at the time.
So, is it possible to get someone to want to embrace the technology? Yes, but here’s your primary objective. If you even want to get your foot in the door and have a chance to win them over, you must first find ways to shut down their fear. Even if there are incentives for embracing the technology, they often won’t be enough beause fear is more powerful.
Eliminating fear was one of my primary goals in and purposes for writing The Ultimate PC Primer, and it’s also why the book went through four manuscript revisions. It took that long to figure out how to integrate multiple ways and angles for maximizing encouragement and disarming fear at every possible point of newcomer worry.
People find security in knowing they’re not the first to have trod the road of technology adoption, and it’s comforting to know that others who have had the same fears go on to overcome them and do well. (See the Introduction of The Ultimate PC Primer for my personal story, which is available in the Look Inside feature on Amazon.) Stories of success go a long way to reassure fearful skeptics.
So if you’re trying to convince a parent, friend, or colleague to embrace some new technology without success, take a step back and ask if that person is likely afraid. If so, drop the logical arguments and make the emotional barriers your first battle. Find examples of others who have overcome the same skepticism and worries. Empathize with their fears, even if you know those fears are unnecessary. Lastly, remember to be patient.
In my next post, I’ll offer some other ways to further encourage technology adoption.
Ever wondered how to explain the concept of computer viruses? My PC recently acquired a virus. While I was killing it (using my anti-virus software), one of my children observed, “Oh! Computers get sick, too?” Cute? Well, adults often have the same question. So here’s an answer and explanation using analogies and a fun story involving zombies…
No, computers can’t get biological diseases. Like most personal computing concepts, the term is metaphorical, borrowed from the real-world equivalent. A real human or animal virus is an entity that intrudes — gets into the inside of the body — and goes about doing something it shouldn’t, usually causing harm.
The same is true in computing. In The Ultimate PC Primer, I explain that computer programs (software) are really sets of instructions, like a recipe. The computer is just a mindless machine following these instructions. In fact, it knows nothing else except how to follow its instructions — precisely. And ideally, that’s what you want from a computer: consistency and precision in obeying the instructions given it. That’s what makes it useful for you. It follows instructions presumably intended to produce a helpful result. But what would happen if some instructions were given to it that were designed to do something harmful?
Imagine you are entering a cooking or baking competition. You must organize and direct the efforts of five chefs who will prepare five dishes you have selected from five recipes. The completed dishes will be presented to the judges of the competition. The chefs will follow any instructions exactly. (They’re like mindless chef-zombies who know only about following recipes.) All you need to do is provide the instructions for how they are to prepare each dish. So you select five sophisticated recipes from your recipe collection or cookbook and set them out for the zombie chefs to follow. But… Read the rest of this entry »
For the month of February, you can get a 15% discount on The Ultimate PC Primer by ordering through this product page on the publisher’s e-store site and using code 3SGC9EP7 at checkout. That’s 15% off 15 Simple Lessons for Understanding Personal Computers. Sweet!
What is bandwidth? Why does everything seem to slow down when viewing a large photograph or YouTube video on a PC?
Faced with explaining (to a non-technical audience) how internet connection speed and file size impact the user’s experience, I came up with a simple explanation using props: balloons. Here’s the 90-second version that should be adequate for most “normal users.”
Are books old or new technology? Is printing books on paper obsolete, or does it still have an advantage in some cases? After Apple’s announcement about iBooks Textbooks yesterday, I think the answer is: both.
At the heart of it, iBooks is 1.) about the difference between electronic and printed books and 2.) about bringing the real-time digital world into the traditional publishing sphere. Kindle, Nook, and (to a lesser extent) iPad have been in the business of taking that which was formerly constrained to paper and making it available quickly, sometimes more cheaply, but certainly in a more portable package: e-books. And there’s not doubt that the fusion of e-books with the rest of the digital world was going to happen eventually. Plus, there’s that unspoken rule in the tech market which says, “New is always better than anything older.” So by that reasoning, books must be no exception, right? Well, there are numerous advantages, but I think there is one exception. Read the rest of this entry »
Looking to give something to your parents to help them understand their PC? Or, is someone you know too afraid to engage a personal computer? Give them a copy of The Ultimate PC Primer: 15 Simple Lessons for Understanding Personal Computers(available online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, from the publisher, or through many other booksellers). The gift of understanding, for less than ten bucks.
What is an operating system? That’s a question I’ve received from time to time here. While I provide an adequate explanation in The Ultimate PC Primer, my intent in the book wasn’t to spend a lot of time explaining operating systems. Here’s why…
For most ordinary users, an operating system is a nothing. It is taken for granted. We don’t care much about it so long as it works. Applications/programs are where the value of the computer lies for us. But the question about operating systems often comes from computer newcomers who are starting to spread their wings. They’ve learned not all computer systems look and function the same, and by raw research, asking a friend, or context clues they eventually realize that this is due to different “operating systems.”
So, today on Explain Technology, today’s questions are: what is an operating system and what good is one? Why does a computer need it, and what does that mean for us?
Let’s answer this backwards. If you know that nearly everything you want to do with a computer involves programs or “apps,” then the first thing to learn is that those programs won’t work without an operating system (OS). Think of this like automobiles and the road. If you have several nice cars parked in your garage, you undoubtedly own them so that you can drive them somewhere — so that they will carry you from one place to another. Could you drive them with no road? No, you need a road for them to function and rules of the road (driving rules) for them to operate safely, without crashing into other cars. Likewise, computer programs that you like to use to achieve some useful benefit also need a bedrock to work from and rules in which to operate.
I was truly speechless the moment I found out Steve Jobs passed away — so suddenly, only a day after Apple’s first big announcement without him at the helm. I wonder if he held on, wanting to see the transition to Tim Cook. Perhaps that was pure coincidence. Or maybe he held on for another reason: to see Siri announced to the world.
Siri was Apple’s largest news on October 4th, but many consumers shrugged it off, saying, “It’s cool, but it’s not an iPhone 5, like we expected. And this voice-driven technology has been creeping forward for some time. It’s hardly big news.” After recovering from the shock and taking time to reflect on what Jobs really did during his lifetime — making computer-driven technology usable for the everyday person — I’m thinking that, for Jobs, Siri might have been the beginning of something much greater that Apple has been dreaming about for a long time — something significant that would eventually, once again, lead to a dramatic shift in personal computing.
Interfaces
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak changed computing to be personal foremost by changing the interface. My lifespan happens to coincide with their work, so I can attest to the effect of their genius on ordinary individuals like me. I grew up on the Apple II in grade school, my family owned an Apple IIGS (limited edition, bearing Woz’s signature!), and I eventually moved on to use the Macintosh interface and the subsequent Windows graphical interfaces based on it.
The Apple IIGS had the first primitive GUI operated by mouse. The introduction of the graphical operating system was the pivotal shift in computing that added the “personal” to computer. Everything hinged on this until Apple redefined elegant human-to-computer interface again with the iPhone and iPad, leveraging touch and gestures to make the device even more natural and personal.
Now, a great many people are claiming that touch and gestures are the way we’ll all interface with computers in the future and that the mouse as we know it is dead. (Here’s one example: The Mouse Dies. Touch and Gesture Take Center Stage) And while I don’t deny the usefulness of touch screens to simplify interface, I’ve said before they aren’t a magic bullet. They actually intimidate some newcomers. (Don Norman, the great design guru, also highlights some issues in Gesture Wars.) Though the harmony between hand and screen has been streamlined, users still must understand graphical conventions. That’s why I’ve been posting for some time that core computing concepts still need to be taught to newcomers. And that’s also why I’m pretty excited about Apple with Siri, because I think Jobs saw it as the way to reinvent the human-to-computer interface once again…
Your voice is the next interface
Back in 1987, Apple released this futuristic video showcasing a voice-commanded personal assistant. (Note also that the implied date in the video is either September of 2010 or 2011, very close to the actual Siri announcement.)
Though the depiction above feels a little more like the ship’s computer from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Siri is likely not (yet) as advanced as the personal assistant in the Knowledge Navigator video. But it’s not hard to see the connection. And I’m by no means the first one who has drawn comparisons between Siri and Knowledge Navigator (and Star Trek for that matter). Just do a web search and you’ll find plenty of hits. But here’s the salient point…
If you could reliably control your computer by taking to it — like Star Trek — then the need for understanding graphical UI elements and gestures is significantly reduced and the barrier to computing (for newcomers) becomes virtually non-existent. Your voice doesn’t need to be taught. The interface is built-in and the conventions are only limited to what the computer can understand.
As the person who wrote the primer for newcomers learning to understand desktop PC interfaces, the prospect of using one’s voice as the primary interface absolutely thrills me. Think of this: no need to teach someone how to relate to the computer. No need to explain icons and procedures. The teaching of the “interface” is essentially offloaded to whomever teaches the individual to speak. No longer would computer vendors be burdened with GUI usability; they would only focus on voice command recognition. This would truly be a revolution in computer interface, and it’s only a matter of time before the technology is powerful and adaptive enough to provide this capability. Apple may simply be, as usual, taking a vision to market first.
The future of interfaces
While the mouse may be history very soon, I don’t think some artists will ever get away from a physical stylus or external device to assist with detailed pixel-resolution work. And touch screens are certainly here to stay. But I believe that Steve Jobs was preparing to take us to a place where both hand-powered interface and icon-based operation as we know it take a backseat. I’d like to know what Ted Nelson thinks of this, since he suggested that any person ought to be able to understand a computer within ten seconds. Ted, maybe the future that Jobs was planning to bring to us was not a world where we understand the computer, but where the computer understands us. If we are able to speak to our computer like we would a fellow human and have it obey us reliably, then anyone who can speak would, regardless of prior “computer experience,” be able to immediately accomplish the most common computing tasks without the overhead of required pre-existing mental models for software operation based on metaphors. And that would mean that, though he didn’t live to see it fulfilled, Steve Jobs would have once again orchestrated the rebirth of personal computing for ordinary people.
Posted by Ben K 
For the month of February, you can get a 15% discount on The Ultimate PC Primer by ordering through 
