My ephiphany of the morning

I had a real epiphany this morning while having breakfast at the hotel.  They’ve got a couple of industrial full-auto coffee machines there, push the desired button and coffee appears.  The buttons are all labelled clearly as long black, macchiato, extra milk etc.  A monkey should be able to use it.

So why did I spend several minutes watching people peer myopically at the world’s simplest interface in consternation, then hesitantly push a random button, and finally look disappointedly at the result?  It’s a freaking coffee machine, not rocket science, but it defeated multiple people.

The same people then lined up to try their hand at the toaster.  Put bread in top, toast comes out bottom.  One group required the combined efforts of three people to figure this out.  One of the people wasn’t sure about all this and squatted down so they could watch the bread the whole time it went through the conveyor, presumably just in case there was any witchcraft going on and they might have had to burn someone.  I suppose this is why fax machines confuse people – how does the fax go to the other people if the paper comes back out?  And can you e-mail me that document back when you have finished with it, it’s my only copy.  *sigh*

I think it’s times like these “when I had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity”(thanks Jules).  Stuff that is incredibly basic just seems to turn people into drooling idiots when there’s any sort of technology involved, regardless of how basic it seems to the rest of us.  If you can’t operate a push button coffee machine, then I have no idea how you’re going to master using a PC.  Certainly subjects like a file directory structure or navigating somewhere that can’t be found using your Yahoo toolbar isn’t going to happen.  Log into the world’s simplest Belkin or Netgear modem and enter a username and password?  Forget it, you’re talking fantasy.

This will probably make me sound like a complete cruel bastard, but it’s true so what the hell.

As an exercise, think of someone you know whom you consider to be of “average intelligence”.  Now consider that 50% of the people running around out there are dumber than that, some considerably so if they’re at the end of the bell curve.  That kind of frightens me.  Some old dude in the hotel this morning was having problems figuring out the freaking lift buttons.  I have no idea how such people cope with modern society.  They’re the people lined up at the post office on Saturday mornings with their little dog-earned bank book, withdrawing cash from their savings account they’ve had since Menzies was in power.

Like I said, it’s mean but it’s true.

It’s times like this that I think I understand the challenge to be faced in selling something like the NBN.  It means nothing to these people.  Ultimately they might benefit from it when their doctor has access to a high speed medical database, or they can access additional services at the local government department, but to them I honestly think it’s all white man’s magic they can’t see, don’t understand, don’t even know they don’t understand – and thus how can they see the benefit?  They can see additional teachers in schools, more being spent on roads and more nurses in hospitals, because that’s tangible for them.  What they need to see is a killer app like a full-screen video phone they can talk to their grandkids on.

In the end, I did get my coffee, but only because one of the group finally achieved success (possibly by accident) and everyone else charged around to see this miracle (apparently the last time such a thing happened, there was a star in the east), thus giving me unfettered access to the other rig.