[daraul]

The car analogy falls apart though, when you consider the complexity of the tasks that he's complaining about.

We would rightly laugh at anyone who complained that their car wouldn't 'turn on' when they jammed their key into the gap between the ignition and the steering column, or because the car was out of fuel. We'd laugh if they complained that they can't see at night because they didn't turn the lights on, and needed reminders every time they drove at night to find the light switch.

We'd laugh at someone who burned the car's engine and transmission up because they stomped on the gas pedal while the car was in park, because "when I press it the car usually goes forward but this time it didn't." Repeat, so on and so forth with every 'common' function in a car.

The problem is that people aren't learning about these basic functions that are required in day-to-day operation of a computer, like they do with a car. The wifi is a good example: Someone who owns a laptop should have a cursory familiarity with the wireless networking functionality and be able to find and connect to networks, because a laptop is made to be portable and will therefore be expected to use unfamiliar networks. Granted, the proxy settings are somewhat more forgivable as that's a non-standard setting, but it still doesn't excuse the person's total inability to find the network.

And the main point of the article stands as a rebuttal of the truism "Kids are better at computers", because they significantly aren't. They're only slightly less clueless than their parents.

[brigade]

The wifi is actually somewhat excusable, if they only ever connect to the internet at home or work and could have been years since those two networks were configured. Plenty of people never use internet on their laptop outside of two or three places.

However, it's pure lunacy on the part of the IT guy to expect people to know the specific proxy settings (including whether or not a proxy is needed), where to enter them, what sites exactly are being blocked, and how to diagnose where in the chain of powerpoint -> computer -> AP -> proxy -> internet your video is failing and how to fix it.

Going to cars, that's like expecting someone to be able to diagnose why an engine isn't starting when they turn the key in the ignition. Without any sonic or haptic clues.

[zerohp]

He should have configured the DHCP server to send proxy settings to clients (option 252).

[vehementi]

Because sonic and haptic clues are more useful than specific error messages explaining the problem? I guess so, since people just don't read them...

[brigade]

Well yes - even an amateur has a chance of realizing from said clues whether their battery is dead, or they're out of gas.

But for network issues, the error message you're going to get 19 times out of 20 is some minor variant of "Server could not be reached." Which offers no additional information that you don't already know from it failing to work.

[vehementi]

"Server can't be reached" gives critical, actionable information. Error messages can be searched for! If you can't search for an error message, you can't use a computer.

[brigade]

Or you can't search for it because you can't reach the internet.

Anyway, if you can definitively figure out which of the following is true from that message without the use of additional diagnostic utilities, well... (yes I have personally seen all of these (except exactly 12 which I've seen variants of but worded it the same way as the article))

1. Your cable modem can't find a signal, because of weather conditions

2. Your cable modem can't find a signal, but can once it's rebooted

3. Your access point stopped working, and needs a power cycle

4. The AP failed to give your computer any of: an IP address, DNS, a gateway, a working gateway

5. Your computer thinks it's connected to a wireless network, but the AP isn't receiving packets it sends

6. Your computer thinks it's connected to a wireless network, has the correct gateway, and can ping the AP, but nothing else (despite other computers on the same network working fine)

7. Your AP randomly resets long-lived TCP streams (due to a bug in its firmware)

8. Your ISP reliably corrupts traffic from eBay, fixed by getting a different IP address and gateway from the ISP (by changing MAC addresses)

9. Your ISP has the wrong DNS entries for the site you're attempting to visit

10. You need to visit a specific, unadvertised intranet page and sign in before your connection works

11. You need to manually enter intranet proxy settings before your connection works

12. Your intranet proxy is blocking Youtube and the player you're using doesn't bundle a general-purpose web browser

13. Youtube videos buffer at 3 kb/s from your laptop, but work fine from your tablet, on the same network

(okay 12 and 13 are cheating a little since they don't give any error message, but the point is that the error messages are basically never enough on their own to diagnose network issues)

[vehementi]

Again, you can search with mobile, or someone else's mobile, someone else's laptop, etc.

I appreciate your point regarding the multitude of possibilities for a server error, but remember what we're talking about. The user did not even attempt to read the error message, did not know what it said, and kept retrying thinking things would change. He didn't take some next step to try to diagnose potential connection problems (e.g. check for ethernet cable), he just threw his hands in the air, said it doesn't work, and ran to IT. He can't use computers.

[zerohp]

Search for an error message when you can't use the network. Nice.

[vehementi]

Mobile. Other people with mobile. Other computers. Nice. If you can't get a error message searched for, you can't use computers.

[stormcrowsx]

So our mistake is that computers don't make grindy noises when they are broke. More grindy noises engineers!

[dsuth]

No, the problem is that complex systems fail in non-obvious ways. Even highly technical and computer savvy people still need to hit the reset button on a Windows PC or router, due to an un-diagnosable problem which then magically goes away. Computers are not intuitive without a large amount of experience to know how things 'should' work. This is a recognised phenomenon in safety critical systems such as those protecting nuclear plants - simple devices fail in known, predictable ways, complex devices fail in non-deterministic ways. This is why humans generally don't 'get' computers, and aren't willing to invest even minimal time in understanding them - there's no payoff until you've invested a huge amount of time to cover the majority of the problem space.

The only solution is higher quality in the development of software and hardware, and that's back on us.

[rayiner]

The rebuttal to that is that people might be able to learn if software people didn't keep changing how it works. It's obvious on nearly every car since 1960 where the ignition is. Can you say the same for the Wi-Fi settings on computers?

[BWStearns]

Also, it's almost always been located in either the top right or bottom right of the screen (re. Windows/OSX here). If all of a sudden the new OSX version required a command line to connect, or changed the icon to something else, I'd understand. But to borrow from the car example, the ignition is unlikely to be located in the trunk.

[rayiner]

Except on phones, where it's not (at least, you can't click on it even if there is an icon there). And I believe Windows doesn't necessarily show the icon unless WiFi is configured. And ignition switches all look the same, not so much for WiFi settings.

[eftpotrm]

I just checked two Android devices (Nexus 10 and Xperia Z FWIW) and they both jump when you try to tap the WiFi icon, giving an indication of the pulldown menu behind it.

Honestly, I'm mostly with the author on this. Maybe it's a UK thing and maybe his experience of schools has made him particularly jaded, but I see a lot of functional tech illiterates. For example - I've recently had people not notice their laptop wasn't charging after being warned it had a dodgy power cable and reminded where the charge status icon was, then wonder went it suddenly turned off. Or complain that their browser was broken and installed a different browser because their home page had been changed, even though the available functionality was identical.

We need to make computers easier to discover, sure, but users need to take responsibility for their own machines not ask to be babied while assuming every IT person can bale them out.

[vehementi]

Oh no, they have to click Settings -> Wireless? This is so complicated it's justifiable to critique the author on this point?

[mikeash]

I recently bought a new car, and an amusing part of the test drive experience was figuring out how to start the damned things. Half the new cars these days have a smart key system with a plain power button on the dashboard, and it took me some fiddling to figure out exactly what other actions (pushing the brake, mainly) had to be taken to make that button actually work.

[TeMPOraL]

But you did, eventually, figure it out on your own and make it work. That's the whole point - 95% of people are pathologically unable to do that, when it comes to technology.

[daraul]

I included the bit about the keys/ignition not because it's in an odd place, but because it's a mistake I make fairly often due to carelessness. Most people blindly reach for the ignition and that's fine; most people also don't immediately quit when they miss the hole on their first try.

[gbhn]

The counterpoint to this is that the folk understanding of computers is, when you consider it, often more compelling than the expert understanding.

The notion that all the computers somehow mysteriously talk to one another, or that if you can get WiFi you should be able to get to the whole internet, is not crazy. It is The Way Things Should Be! It's our job to rig up the equivalent of headlight switches for computers, so they work the way the folk expectation says. If your headlight switch required you to have a compatible dongle, which of course has exactly the same connector as 15 other types of dongle, and will only illuminate the left half of the road until you flip 50 other switches in the car, it would be crazy. That's what the computer world feels like a lot of the time.

It's definitely true that there is such a thing as digital literacy, that it is crucially important (although harder to get than it ought to be), and that many people mistakenly don't put in the effort to acquire it, for many reasons.