Generation Gap
Obviously a gap in understanding is to be expected between us and the previous generation when it comes to technology. What could be interesting is in the details they choose to highlight in their stories.
I’m not going to into the details of the problem — it’s far too banal. Needless to say my new work colleague in her 40’s seem far more interested in telling me about the behaviour of Internet Explorer and how she couldn’t log onto hotmail, than the dialogue box she had got previously regarding missing files and her internet connection.
I blame caches. Certain cache settings give old people the illusion their internet is working.
Anyway the amazing part of this story is that after several minutes of her explaining it, and me asking all sorts of questions, only at the end did she choose to casually mention something about something popping up with the text “Trapdoor virus”, and then innocently ask if it could have anything to do with the problem.
I give up. Surely even our baby-booming friends know that the word “virus” is reasonably pertinent when it comes to the world of computers. Needless to say, if it IS the Trapdoor.338 virus, it’s very bad. Although I get the impression from this description then a lot more would be going wrong. Although it had only happened this morning before she came to work. Anyway I’m not sure, I just thought it amusing she didn’t mention it, you know, first.
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Andy
October 27th, 2004 at 3:52 am
That’s why I could never work in tech support. If I’m there I can see the relevant details and (usually) fix the problem. I know what each screen should look like. Over the phone people pick out details they think are relevant but aren’t. You have to try and diagnose the problem and fix it through their interpretation of it. Anyway I had a point here. Yes, I was just going to say, before I was caught in that rant, that, which even people in my own family are guilty of, some people will see an error message and not read it. When asked about the error message they won’t know what it said. I’ve use the metaphor of having a fuel light in the car coming on so you take it to garage to some effect. The error message tells you what is wrong – except for microsoft’s which are fatal errors and a string of hexidecimal code – so I find it unbelievable that people ignore them.
I really found this session therapeutic. Same time next week doctor?