The trials of inappropriate technology
Kevin Harris is secretary to INSINC,
the national working party on social inclusion in the information society.
They found one of the main barriers to entry into the Information Society
is that existing technology is extremely cumbersome and off-putting to the
naive user.
The Working Party has found that the most problematic aspect of the information
society is the appropriateness of the existing technology. This in itself
is not surprising: the surprise comes when we note how little attention
is paid to this point in other commentaries on the information society.
The explanation for this probably lies in the sheer seductiveness of the
technology when it works. Privileged people have trouble-free access to
the information highway, and then enthuse about its enormous potential.
Finding confirmation in the experience of others similar to themselves,
they lose sight of the fact that their advantage follows from a combination
of good fortune and perhaps technical astuteness on their part or on the
part of another. At this delicate stage in the evolution of the information
society, the comfortable evangelist can be dangerous.
As we make clear elsewhere in this report, on the whole we concur with those
who make strong claims for the democratising and empowering potential of
online communication. However, it seems mysteriously easy for those with
privileged access to overlook the fact that the existing technology is extremely
cumbersome and off-putting to the naive user, especially to those without
a technologically-adept contact to advise and support them. For many, the
Internet is characterised by the 'egg-timer' symbol which appears on the
screen to warn them that after 10 minutes of inaction they will reach a
Web site which is under construction and contains no useful information.
Others will be put off by the often tortuous logistics of loading a browser;
finding their entire online access disabled after following a service provider's
instructions on loading their software upgrade; replying to an email message
and having the reply 'bouncing' (ref); being put in a lengthy telephone
queue when they call their provider's helpline; having their modem disabled
by a service provider's visiting expert, or worse... All these scenarios,
and more, have been experienced by members of the Working Party.
For the most part, this technology is not particularly new: the advances
of recent years have mostly been improvements on existing possibilities.
And we fully agree with the challenge to the IT industry when a correspondent
says to us, 'why should I have to know about COM ports and winsock.dll and
uuencode and file transfer protocol and so forth: it's 1996, why should
I ?
Daithi O'Flaherty, CINNI, reminds us: 'The problem with the technology is
that we've never got one thing right before we move on to the next.'
It is to be hoped that computer and online technology will soon have outgrown
its phase as a domain for specialists, a priesthood with protected knowledge.
We find encouragement in the analogy of the development of motorcycles.
For a long time, motorcycles were of interest only to people who didn't
mind getting oil on their hands or on their clothes: this was part of the
culture and British manufacturers did little to discourage it. Motorcyclists
were not just users, they were also mechanics, mostly men, fascinated by
the technology for its own sake, adept specialists who spoke a common language
of their own. In the 1960s, Japanese manufacturers perceived that, properly
presented as reliable, clean, safe machines, motorcycles could appeal to
people who did not need to know how they worked, did not need to speak the
jargon, and did not identify with the prevailing associated culture.
The technology of personal computers, modems, browsers and so forth is,
we hope, approaching a comparable stage, when equipment which provides straightforward
Internet access comes to the consumer as an appliance, not as a specialist
tool. Without this transformation taking place, however, a socially inclusive
information society in our view simply cannot be brought about.
It follows that policy-makers have to consider ways in which the IT industry
can be encouraged to address the interests of the naive consumer, in technological
terms rather than in marketing terms. At the moment what happens is that
marketing experts present customers with a glorified image of membership
of the information society, an image which disguises the potentially problematic
complexity of the technology. A handful of technically proficient community
activists and development workers struggle to bridge the expertise gap which
this creates; and initiatives in the community sector are forced to call
for intermediaries to help set up and use IT.
A huge training industry is one of the consequences, but in an information
society very little IT training, in the conventional sense, should be necessary.
It is essential that we see, soon, a technology which is as appropriate
to the end user as a microwave oven or a television and video recorder:
ie, a system which is reliable, compatible with existing patterns of behaviour,
and requires a manual of no more than a few pages written in plain language.
Kevin Harris
Community Development Foundation
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