Software Apartheid


There's an old joke in Hollywood that you can bump into a stranger in the grocery store and ask how his screenplay is doing. The stranger without hesitation will reply, "Great! I've just restructured the second act to tighten up the action!" The same joke is now true in Silicon Valley. You can buttonhole a stranger in line at Starbucks and ask how her Web site is doing. The stranger without skipping a beat will reply, "Great! I've just restructured the frames to tighten up the navigation!"

Here in Silicon Valley, we forget how skewed our population is, and we should frequently remind ourselves how abnormal we really are. The average person who uses a software-based product around here isn't really very average.

Programmers generally work in high-tech environments, surrounded by their technical peers in enclaves such as Silicon Valley; Route 128 outside Boston; Research Triangle in North Carolina; Redmond, Washington; and Austin, Texas. Software engineers constantly encounter their peers when they shop, dine out, take their kids to school, and relax, and their contact with frustrated computer users is limited. What's more, the occasional unfocused gripes of the users are offset by the frequent enthusiasm of the knowledgeable elite. We forget how far removed we and our peers are from the inability of the rest of the country (not to mention the world) to use interactive tools without frustration.

We industry insiders toss around the term "computer literacy," assuming that in order to use computers, people must acquire some fundamental level of training. We see this as a simple demand that isn't hard and is only right and proper. We imagine that it isn't much to ask of users that they grasp the rudiments of how the machines work in order to enjoy their benefits. But it is too much to ask. Having a computer-literate customer base makes the development process much easier of that there can be no doubt but it hampers the growth and success of the industry and of society. Apologists counter with the argument that you must have training and a license to drive a car, but they overlook the fact that a mistake with a car frequently kills people, but a mistake with software generally doesn't. If cars weren't so deadly, people would train themselves to drive the same way they learn Excel.

The concept of computer literacy has another, more insidious, effect. It creates a demarcation line between the haves and have-nots in society. If you must master a computer in order to succeed in America's job market beyond a burger-flipper's career, then mastering the interactive system's difficulty prevents many people from moving into more productive, respected, and better-paying jobs.

Users should not have to acquire computer literacy to use computers for common, rudimentary tasks in everyday life. Users should not have to possess a digital sensitivity to work their VCR or microwave oven, or to get email. What's more, users should not have to acquire computer literacy to use computers for enterprise applications, when the user is already trained in the application domain. An accountant, for example, who is trained in the general principles of accounting, shouldn't have to be computer literate to use a computer in her accounting practice. Her domain knowledge should be enough to see her through.

As our economy shifts more and more onto an information basis, we are inadvertently creating a divided society. The upper class is composed of those who have mastered the nuances of differentiating between "RAM" and "hard disk." The lower class consists of those who treat the difference as inconsequential. The irony is that the difference really is inconsequential to anyone except a few hard-core engineers. Yet virtually all contemporary software forces its users to confront a file system, where your success is fully dependent on knowing the difference between RAM and disk.

Thus the term "computer literacy" becomes a euphemism for social and economic apartheid. Computer literacy is a key phrase that brutally bifurcates our society.

But what about people who are not inclined to pander to technocrats and who cannot or will not become computer literate? These people, many by choice, but most by circumstance, are falling behind in the information revolution. Many high-tech companies, for example, won't even consider for employment any applicant who does not have an email address or whose resume isn't online. I'm sure that there are many otherwise-qualified candidates out there who can't get hired because they are not yet wired. Despite the claims of the apologists, using email effectively is difficult and involves a significant level of computer literacy. Therefore, it artificially segregates the workforce. It is the moral equivalent of the banking technique of "redlining." In this illegal procedure, all houses in a given neighborhood are declared unacceptable as collateral for a housing loan. Although the red lines on the map are ostensibly drawn around economic contours, they tend to follow racial lines all too closely. Bankers protest that they are not racists, but the effect is the same.

When programmers speak of "computer literacy," they are drawing red lines around ethnic groups, too, yet few have pointed this out. It is too hard to see what is really happening because the issue is obscured by technical mythology. It is easy to see regardless of how true that a banker can make a loan on one house as easily as on another. However, it is not easy to see that a programmer can make interactive products easy enough for people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to use.

As an industry, we are largely in denial about the problem of usable interactive products. There are too many apologists shouting about dancing bears. Their histrionics drown out our doubts about the efficacy of our software-based products. Before we begin to look for solutions, we must collectively come to our senses about the scope and severity of the problem. This is the goal of the next section.



Inmates Are Running the Asylum, The. Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy &How to Restore the Sanity - 2004 publication
ISBN: B0036HJY9M
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 170

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