I don’t talk much about work. That’s for the best. I often wonder, though, whether mechanics or doctors or lawyers or architects – or most any profession, really – has as much to roll their eyes about. Day in and day out, somebody says that they don’t want to put their iPad on the company’s operating system. Or that they need an email server for their computer. Or that they want to bookmark Apple Mail on their browser – and when it’s explained that they can’t bookmark a program, they want to move all their bookmarks into Apple Mail. (Seriously, I just spent five minutes trying to explain the difference between a website and an application to somebody who still didn’t get it. And I punted.)
Computers are not magic. There are too many people willing to believe they are, and too many people eager to accumulate power for themselves by indulging that belief. But it’s not a good idea for a technologist to inculcate in the end users a whole “this is magical stuff that you cannot understand” mentality. It’s counter-productive, it means more work for the support folks, and ultimately, it results in a worse class of performance.
I’m not arguing here that everyone should be writing in Assembly and recompiling their own kernel and building the OS of their phone from source. What I’m arguing for is the simple acts of basic competence and basic troubleshooting. What is the network? What is the operating system? What are programs? What are websites? Do you know which cable is the power and which is the Ethernet? Have you tried quitting the program and starting it again? How about logging out and back in? HAVE YOU TRIED TURNING IT OFF AND ON AGAIN?
I mean, for Godsakes I’m not even asking people to learn to drive stick. I’m asking people to distinguish between the steering wheel, the gearshift, the ignition key, the radio, the seat, the car, the road and which lane you’re in.
Never mind Chrome OS – Marc Andressen’s vision of the browser-as-OS has come true in many workplaces. You have Word and Excel, and then everything else – email, PeopleSoft, Oracle, payroll and timecard – it all comes through one browser (as often as not IE, and way too often still IE6). And the documents? Those just pile up on the desktop. Maybe with some folders if you’re lucky.
I think this is one of the reasons the iPad has so much appeal. The extra layers imposed by the windowing-based interface are gone. Browser? Right there. RSS? There. Calendar? There. No desktop, no documents, no file system. If you’re getting at everything through a browser anyway, what does it matter the form of the browser? Ask National Geographic whether they’re glad to have dumped Lotus Notes for Google Apps, which in turn is accessible from damn near anything in one form or another.
Ultimately, then, this is the solution we have gone with: take the average office drone, take his computer, and then engineer away anything he might use to screw it up. Try to find some way to prevent Lois Lane from being trapped on the ledge – make the ledge bigger, put up a railing, make the windows smaller, only build five feet off the ground. But how much time can you save if you can just explain to Lois what she needs to do to stay the hell off the damn ledge in the first place?