Asymmetrical Information

I was Secretary to the Faculty here at These Colleges for 3 years and attempted to put the faculty meeting minutes online. I had never HEARD such whining. I was also assured that there were more than 2 members of our English department who refused to participate in any departmental business conducted via email -- everything had to be printed for them.

These people will die and retire soon -- but not soon enough!

Then again, I'm the sort of person who starts tapping his foot uncontrollably anywhere near someone deleting emails (or formatting cells in a spreadsheet) one-by-one with their mouse.

Ahoy ahoy, I am in the presence of a fellow Keyboard Shortcut Master? Sir! It is an honor.

I suspect there might be considerable overlap between clickaphobes and those who boast about their mathematical illiteracy.

Mindles, not sure if this is the same phenomenon, but I've worked with lots of people who could understand paper better than computer screens. They would rather delve through a 100 page report than search through a flat file database.

In at least some of those cases, it wasn't that they couldn't use the computer, just that they preferred paper.

And yes, there is definitely a generational issue here. I haven't seen this in anyone much younger than me (say, under 35), and it's much more common with people who've been around longer (say, over 50).

Of course, when people reach a certain seniority level, they can get away with things (like not understanding Excel well enough to format multiple cells) that would lead to 25 year olds being shown the door.

A Taxonomy of Cognitive Stress by Eric Raymond almost addresses this; you are extending his low end past zero into negative territory. Of course people designing software can't do much to help these people.

I use the boxes 6 out of 8 hours in a working day mostly for engineering related things. When I am doing catalog searches for parts and pieces I still prefer Paper. The electronic catalogs are NOT there yet on slow connections. If you are sure of what you want (one item) they will work, but if you need a large number of items it can be painfully slow.

I did a few years in IT and found that many executives seemed to consider it a point of pride that they were computer illiterate. These guys would have their secretaries print out their email so they could read them.

Bolie IV

sometimes paper is better, especially when you want to view more than one thing at a time (ppts, some crazy word docs)

but generally its a pain in the ass

trust me, you can't pull this shizzit as a kid. Never mind professionally, you have to keep up socially

Another few years and I suspect most employers will consider this a critical professional shortcoming.

Here here.

I certainly don't mind paper for some things, mind you; I still haven't become accustomed to taking peripheral notes on my laptop, for example. But it's the people who refuse to use the computer that drive me bonkers. If my 85-year-old grandmother can understand how to use e-mail without requiring a printer, these highly-educated professionals should be able to handle it.

And, I suspect there might be considerable overlap between clickaphobes and those who boast about their mathematical illiteracy. from above? Complete agreement.

Another few years and I suspect most employers will consider this a critical professional shortcoming.

Yes!

I certainly don't mind paper for some things, mind you; I still haven't become accustomed to taking peripheral notes on my laptop, for example. But it's the people who refuse to use the computer that drive me bonkers. If my 85-year-old grandmother can understand how to use e-mail without requiring a printer, these highly-educated professionals should be able to handle it.

And, I suspect there might be considerable overlap between clickaphobes and those who boast about their mathematical illiteracy from above? Complete agreement.

sometimes paper is better, especially when you want to view more than one thing at a time

LUA: okay, I have to admit that sometimes I print out a long subroutine. But that's only so I can read it on the train, I swear. Seriously, sometimes screen size is a limitation, and paper can help.

I did a few years in IT and found that many executives seemed to consider it a point of pride that they were computer illiterate.

Bolie: that's a point that hadn't occurred to me. I have a couple of brothers in advertising, and they've explained the way dress code works in the creative department. Dressing down (back when the rest of us were still "business formal", anyway) meant you were creative; within limits, the more down you dressed the more creative you were... or appeared to be. I guess a similar dynamic might apply to computer literacy, tho only to a point. (And that point is probably in the past, now.)

What do you want to bet that when companies decide that technophobia isn't to be tolerated any more in new hires, some dimwit in Congress will move to protect the "right" of individuals to work in non-computer related functions? Hopefully, such a movement would be squashed and its proponents obliterated from politics, but I bet there will still be those who push it--Luddism is alive and well today, and it should be dealt with as ruthlessly as always.

Worked for a guy 6 years ago that had his secretary print his emails, he'd write out long hand responses and she'd type them. He'd proofread them and then she'd send them.

Another VP had a revelation where he told me one day how much faster it was to do his own memos in Word and just send them rather than dictating them, waiting for them to be typed, proofreading them and then having the secretary send them.

Another guy had some poor stooge stand next to him during a presentation and hit the space bar on a laptop to advance to the next PPT slide. Refused to even touch the computer. (yea, OK, fine. I admit it, I was the poor spacebar stooge.)

Then I went to work for a software company. Now we get to make fun of people like that, rather than report to them.

Bob

I worked for an old lawyer who would have his secretary print out all his e-mails. Then he would dictated answers, and mark changes on her typed responses which then she would send out. The secretary probably spent 4 hours a day doing his 30 minutes worth of e-mails.

My mom is considered the "computer whiz" at her real estate office. I still sometimes need to remind her which objects are single-clicked, and which are double-clicked.

At least at the mid-upper level of administration (boy, have I taught too many management classes!) I think you're seeing a fear of _actually being seen to be incompetent_ and they fear that more than most things. They have been taught that managers are at the top of the hierarchy and therefore are just next to omnipotent. Since most of them are not even close, their egos won't let them be seen as less than subordinates. Thus, if a subordinate can do it and they can't, then it is ipso facto a job for a subordinate and not a manager's job. To be seen as incompetent to do a _non-specialists_ job is a sign of overall incompetence. Thus, they tend to _delegate_ such tasks. Always. Even space bar movement. Heh.

As far as attorneys go, way too many of them are taught not to dirty their hands with actual manual, non-intellecutual work, and keyboarding is manual, no? Drafting, editing, etc are intellectual.

This tends to go double for university types, who tend to over-specialize, especially those who are now over 50 or so.

It's fear, folks. (At least in the above cases.)

P.S. (I'm over 50 and too dumb to be fearful. My more savvy friends point out that I'm the perfect gamma tester -- just smart enough and just fearless enough to screwup the unscrewupable. ;->= )

I am reminded of a scene in "The Dick Van Dyke Show," episode called "I'm No Henry Walden!"

In the episode Rob and Laura were inadvertantly invited to a dinner party for celebrated literati. When Rob was asked what _he_ wrote, he told them that he wrote for a television comedy-variety show.

The room fell silent, and their matronly hostess chillingly intoned, "We don't own a television machine."

It seems silly now, but in the late `50's and early `60's refusing to acknowledge television was a way of showing your cultural creds. (And this during what is now seen as the most intellectual age of television with drama anthologies like "Playhouse 90," and "Alcoa Theater.")

I used to deal with these kinds of attitudes when I installed and trained users on business software back in the 1980's. People were afraid to look foolish when they made the (very unstable) software lock up, or they may have seen keyboarding skills as "secretarial" and a step down from their current job description.

It's just a different mindset. Some people are not comfortable with computers and are afraid of them, and that sort of thing is often self-sustaining (they fear to explore so they don't learn). Even these days a computer is a moderately expensive and extraordinarily complex piece of very advanced machinery. Imagine if you were sat in front of a particle accelerator and told to make it work. How many people would start messing with the particle accelerator controls until they figured out how to do it right? Not many I'd wager. Especially if you were told that the machine could be broken if you messed with it in the wrong way.

Children and young adults, on the other hand, don't have that same level of fear of breaking things. So they explore more, experiment more, make more mistakes, and learn more. Many adults are too afraid to make a mistake with a computer to actually learn. They should still be smart enough to take classes or use study aids (such as videos) and learn how to use a computer without risking damaging it. Pretty soon I imagine the economic and cultural pressures will force most computer-phobes to either learn or be marginalized (in that not owning and using a computer will be roughly equivalent to not having or knowing how to use a phone).

If shrinks and cognitive scientists had any real answers, they could explain why some skill become déclassé.

If you see me laborious hand copying information onto paper when the very same information is in cut-and-pastible form right up there on my computer screen, don’t hate me. If the information arrived on paper, I’d make my notes with word and excel.

It has only been recently pointed out to me that I never, at least according to the finger-pointers, make my first notes about a use case or budget in the same format that use case or budget was delivered in. Please don’t ask why - I don’t know.

Hmm, I've got a mix of comments on the comments, and the original post.

Firstly my mum has a business that does training in presentation skills for businesses, and occasionally a company happily pays her more to run two courses, one for junior staff and one for senior because the company reckons the juniors shouldn't see the seniors being corrected.

Secondly, a couple of my friends from engineering school (where you definitely get good with computers) have become patent attorneys. They both have personal secretaries and dictate documents to them (despite like me, not being *that* senior). I've never got a clear answer from them on why.

Thirdly, despite having survived the same engineering school, while I don't have a secretary I do frequently print out documents and write on them in the margins and wave them around at people. Hard copies allow me to do things like draw lines from one paragraph to another and make intelligent comments like "?" on the line. Also, since work doesn't issue us all with laptops, it's much easier to carry pieces of paper to meetings.

And niki, I too generally make my first notes in a different format to what it finally winds up in. Mostly because our document management system makes opening a new Word document to make a few quick notes a rather frustrating process.

I suspect there might be considerable overlap between clickaphobes and those who boast about their mathematical illiteracy

I must buck the trend... I'm not terribly literate in math (thanks to failed "New Math" experiments that my school did in the late '60's... hated math ever sense) but I have no problem with computers. In fact I'm one of the first to try new software/hardware at the office. I agree with Jorgxmckie in that most Managers think it's beneath them to operate a computer, either through fear or snobbery. Hey, that's what Admin Assistants are for, right?

Well interesting posts.

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