Like most everything else in life, learning your way around a new piece of software is instructive. (That’s about the most enthusiastic that I can get about the process.)
I have been setting up my new blog on Wordpress. In so doing, I have relied heavily upon a friend who prefers to remain nameless (doubtless to avoid being associated with me, and who can blame her). She had recently set up her own blog, and therefore was familiar with some of the speed bumps involved. Imposing upon her generosity, whenever I came to a part of the process that did not understand, rather than attempting to figure it out, I asked her.
One such problem — not a major problem, but every problem is one more damn thing, you know — was how to arrange for a post that I had written to automatically be published at a later time or date.
I knew it could be done, because I have been doing it for many months for this blog. But this is different software, with different nomenclature and of course with things in different places. So I asked, and she replied, and once I had come to the right place, it was obvious.
In an e-mail, she asked if I had gotten the instructions and said: “See, most of this stuff very simple, isn’t it?” That question crystallized an insight, and suddenly I realized why it is that the younger the person, the easier it is to intuitively understand computers and software.
You see, it isn’t a question of the stuff not being simple. It’s nearly always simple. After all, it is made for morons to be able to do it. (Yeah, I know, so why can’t I do it?) What makes it hard isn’t that it is not simple, it is that it is often somewhat counter-intuitive for those who have a certain amount of life experience. Kids growing up with this stuff find it natural partly because they haven’t spent years doing thing differently, and partly because they do not have certain associations to mislead them.
The specific example that made this clear to me is that Wordpress places control of when a poster will be published within a button that they call Timestamp. Whoever chose that word undoubtedly thought that anyone in his right mind would realize that it meant “how you determine when something will appear.”
They probably never saw a real timestamp. It was a sort of time-clock that you shoved an incoming document into that - naturally - stamped it with the date and time. Those who had used such machines would never think of associating Timestamp with POSTDATING something! It’s the very opposite concept from registering exactly when something was received.
It is a sort of penalty that too much life experience sometimes exacts, counterintuitive associations.
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:39 pm
Dear Mr DeMarco,
I always thought the older a person gets, the more confident you become because you have more life experience. People who are older, adults seem more calm and self confident. Is it because adults understand how the world works better? As an adult, what would you tell people in their teens, 20’s and 30’s who are trying to grow up and be more confident?
Sincerely,
Naomi