Technology

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User accountability and complicated technologies (self.technology)

submitted 1 year ago by elfpie to c/technology

4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've been thinking about the arguments that are increasingly common when dealing with tech: "it's too complicated" and "I just want something that works".

My father gifted a used computer to me and my brother when we were kids. Ours to use, ours to take care. He would pay for the eventual screw up, but we had to walk several blocks carrying the tower to get assistance.

I messed up a lot over the years, mostly because I wanted to explore the little that I knew and learn more. I had some magazines that expected everything to go well if instructions were followed and no access to internet forums to ask for help. I was limited to just one language as well. I had to find a way out. Nowadays things are much more simple and really just work, until they don't and I can't really fix them.

In this world, what people can do is complain. Or offer a report of how things went wrong and wait patiently. It's not even that common for people in general to just go back to the version that worked. There's no version, only the app we use or can't use and it's not our responsibility any kind of maintenance.

I have to confess I was going in another direction when I started, but things are really limited from a consumer's point of view. In part, it's our fault for not wanting to deal with the burden of knowledge, it inevitably takes the control away from us, but big tech really approves and incentives this behavior.

As with so many problems I see in the world, education is the solution. And educating ourselves might be the only dependable option.

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[–] luciole 5 points 1 year ago

It’s important for the average user to ask for well designed products. A lot of so called "human errors" are really design mistakes in disguise.

It’s important as well for the tech community to ask for repairability and control. It’s a matter of owning the object you bought and of reducing waste. Most industries pushed hard against this and practically killed the local repairman.

You can have it all too. You don’t need to sacrifice one in order to have the other. Those two things went in opposite directions in the last decades but I’m not so sure they are that strongly correlated.