While visiting with family for Christmas I asked my nieces if they used RSS. It seemed legitimate enough, since they are from a very metropolitan suburb of Atlanta and two of them live in Athens, GA...home of the University of Georgia. I figured if anyone knew about this stuff it'd be them. They didn't know what RSS was...or news...or Google Reader...or the orange box. I'm convinced it is still too difficult to use for the mainstream. The informal mini-survey just supported that feeling.
I also asked about Facebook. The answer was that it's a way to waste time instead of doing homework. My assessment is that it serves the same purpose as "the Mall" did 30 years ago. It's a place to hang out and talk to friends...albeit one extremely large mall.
I was also told of an instructor that "gets it." I had to ask what that meant. He was "able to relate" is the answer I got. It seems that's the phrase used when more than one person thinks the same way. It doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong, if people agree they think the other one "gets it." I wonder how often I've heard that applied to IT. Tech people tend to think everything we see is a nail just because we have a new hammer. In many cases, paper is all the information system a person needs. Paper is one very robust system for storing data. Any IT person that doesn't recognize that apparently "doesn't get it." :)
No comments:
Post a Comment