21–30 of 61 posts
The address bar in the browser is totally broken from a usability standpoint. If you change it, it doesn't reflect the page you are looking at. This means for example that you can get into a screwed up situation where: - you are looking at page a - page b is being loaded - page c is displayed in the address bar Which is not only highly confusing in itself, it also looks identical to page c being loaded. There is just…
Maybe Hacker News should try and organize free 2 hour "Introduction to the Internet" classes for the elderly? I'm sure it's mainly a matter of ignorance and not a matter of intelligence.
I volunteered for one of these before (it was a series of one-on-one sessions). I patiently walked an elderly gent through the absolute bone basics: starting a browser, using the address bar, using Yahoo mail. It was quite slow at times, but he was a pleasant old guy, and at the end of it, I think he really was ready to correspond with his grandkids on his own. It was definitely rewarding, and I'd recommend it to any…
It takes her a LOT of time to learn the most basic tasks, and I know it's an effort on her part (my grandfather doesn't even try).
She has now mastered the Google search, and so... she uses nothing else :) . That's probably what happened to these other old gentlemen (my grandmother doesn't have a facebook account because she's worried about privacy, but it could have happened to her).
The address bar in the browser is totally broken from a usability standpoint. If you change it, it doesn't reflect the page you are looking at. This means for example that you can get into a screwed up situation where: - you are looking at page a - page b is being loaded - page c is displayed in the address bar Which is not only highly confusing in itself, it also looks identical to page c being loaded. There is just…
I think the author of this blog has a view of "society" that is a little myopic. The premise that the "structure of today's society" is based on facebook and the web is, I think, something several hundred million people in this country would disagree with. The internet itself is not yet one of the few pieces of technology that is intractably ingrained in our societal DNA. On that list? I don't know. Cars. Telephones.…
One of the greatest benefits of the internet is that information breathability has increased drastically. A generation ago, if you wanted to know why the economy was falling apart around your ears, you might look at a newspaper, but if you didn't understand, there wasn't a lot you could do. These days, you have a million web sites and powerful tools for organizing information. Ignorant people these days versus ignorant people those days are drastically different.
And the debate is not about whether Facebook is intractable social DNA. The debate is whether it is a tremendously bad thing that users can't tell whether they're on Facebook or not. They can't, and therefore their ability to access information is greatly diminished.
I don't honestly see how you could think anything different.
I think the author of this blog has a view of "society" that is a little myopic. The premise that the "structure of today's society" is based on facebook and the web is, I think, something several hundred million people in this country would disagree with. The internet itself is not yet one of the few pieces of technology that is intractably ingrained in our societal DNA. On that list? I don't know. Cars. Telephones.…
The address bar in the browser is totally broken from a usability standpoint. If you change it, it doesn't reflect the page you are looking at. This means for example that you can get into a screwed up situation where: - you are looking at page a - page b is being loaded - page c is displayed in the address bar Which is not only highly confusing in itself, it also looks identical to page c being loaded. There is just…
That's only the start of it. How many people who use the web know what http means, or why it appears in their address bar? And how many people at all know what :// is for?
I think the author of this blog has a view of "society" that is a little myopic. The premise that the "structure of today's society" is based on facebook and the web is, I think, something several hundred million people in this country would disagree with. The internet itself is not yet one of the few pieces of technology that is intractably ingrained in our societal DNA. On that list? I don't know. Cars. Telephones.…
Whenever I'm building software, I ask myself "Could my parents use this? Grandparents?" Most of the time, the answer is "probably not". But when it's "Yes", thats when I think I have a good implementation.
Maybe Hacker News should try and organize free 2 hour "Introduction to the Internet" classes for the elderly? I'm sure it's mainly a matter of ignorance and not a matter of intelligence.
What I found, though, is that most of them weren't really interested in learning how to use their computers — at least, not to the point that they'd feel comfortable navigating to interesting new websites.
Instead, they'd usually tell me exactly what they wanted to do, be it access their webmail account or play Bejeweled, and asked me to write out a checklist detailing how to do it (click the Start button, click the blue IE button, etc.). This actually worked pretty well most of the time. But if something didn't go according to plan they were too scared of messing things up to trust their intuition (especially when I wasn't around).
I really wish the iPad was around in those days, it would have been perfect for them.
I think the author of this blog has a view of "society" that is a little myopic. The premise that the "structure of today's society" is based on facebook and the web is, I think, something several hundred million people in this country would disagree with. The internet itself is not yet one of the few pieces of technology that is intractably ingrained in our societal DNA. On that list? I don't know. Cars. Telephones.…
On the contrary, even if you don't use the web on a consistent basis, you actually do still depend on it. When people coordinate shipping groceries, they use the internet. When people plan any aspect of any product you use, they use the internet. When newscasters and radio announcers ready their words and check their facts, they benefit greatly from the internet. One of the greatest benefits of the internet is that i…
He's saying that for a TON of people, they don't need to use it personally, and see no reason to put in the (sometimes) massive amount of effort to learn how to use the web. Their lives go on just fine without their direct involvement.
Also, it is useless to cry "How terrible that so many people don't understand! What a failure!" -- The only failure here is the failure to make software just as intuitive as older technology. For someone who never uses the web, Google is the only option because of it's incredible simplicity. It takes a non-web savvy person quite a while to parse something like Facebook or Amazon.
I'm amazed at the narrow view that so many people (seem to) have.