People too dumb to understand computers

The Inquirer (UK) ^ | 11/20/03 | in-house psychotic

[Nick Danger]

A REPORT BY the Work Foundation has discovered that stupid people don't understand computers and harass IT support if anything goes wrong.

And worse than that, they don't understand the replies the IT support people give them which must mean they're really dumb.

According to the report, managers in the UK are the dumbest of all constituting a "lost generation" because they didn't grow up "immersed in technology".

The year long study talked to a number of companies across the UK of widely different sizes. The report says human ingenuity often overcomes shortcomings in tech systems, with "people plugging the holes in technology".

When we were in technical support ourselves, we found that people often "plugged the holes in technology" by doing something like putting their coffee cup in the CD tray thinking it was a holder, trying to post emails through the floppy disk aperture, and breaking parallel ports by trying to plug serial port plugs in.

"My printer doesn't work," people would wail. That often necessitated a visit to their cubby hole, where you'd discover they hadn't switched it on.

You can find the complete report, called Getting by, not getting on, in all its PDF 1.6MB glory here.

This all holds out little hope of everyone learning assembler or C++ as Dylan Evans recently proposed.

The report notes no one is suffering from information overload because most get less than 30 emails a day. That is, if they remember to switch their machines on.

God, end users are so dumb! µ

[ecurbh]

Techie ping.

[Brett66]

But if people were smart enough to figure out most of their problems, most of the IT guys would be out of work.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

When we were in technical support ourselves, we found that people often "plugged the holes in technology" by doing something like putting their coffee cup in the CD tray thinking it was a holder, trying to post emails through the floppy disk aperture, and breaking parallel ports by trying to plug serial port plugs in.

ROFL!!

Put all of this technology back in the Glass House computer room and give the departments dumb terminals like God intended!!!

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

God, end users are so dumb!

That's why they call them lusers.

It's only the people that refuse to learn and keep asking the same stupid questions over and over again that really get to you.