Sean Reiser

While on the phone last night with a friend who was trying to clean a spyware infection off of her machine I finally was able to articulate something that has been bothering me for a while. The computer industry has long engaged in a passive - aggressive game with the average home user.

We expect everyone to be as fluent in computers as we are. Here's a secret for you: people who use computers recreationally an hour a day aren't going to be as fluent as those of us who spend 14 hours a day in front of these boxes. For us, computers are an adventure, figuring out how and why they work is a pleasure, they don't want an adventure they just want their email. When they aren't as fluent, we blame them for not knowing (and quite frankly, not wanting to know) everything that we do we look down on them or treat them like children.

When it comes down to it, the average person wants a very simple experience when it comes to their computer. They want 4 buttons : Mail, Internet, Word Processing and Spreadsheet. Odds are they wouldn't mind if each of these applications was modal, meaning they could only run one at a time. When we ship computers, by default we load all sorts of software on their machines, but, generally speaking, we only include 2 of those 4 by default. Even odder if someone using is Internet Explorer, we treat the person like some uneducated rube, "Why haven't you installed FireFox?", we'll ask.

As I type this I bet someone was thinking "They don't want a button called Internet, they want a Web Browser". This is a perfect example of my point. Here's the deal, Joe Sixpack doesn't realize that Web is a subset of the Internet nor does he care. He's not likely to use FTP, IRC, Usenet, Archie, Veronica or Jughead, and if he is, he is going to go though a web interface on his browser.

Why, in the name of all that is Holy, do we expect people to be able to manage their own network security without prompting or help? Why do we ship wireless access points which require the user to choose which method of encryption to use? Why do we expect home user to know that a pre-shared key is? Why isn't there a piece of paper taped to ever router on the planet sold which says "TURN ON WPA OR THAT 14 YEAR OLD LONER DOWN THE BLOCK WILL SEE EVERYTHING YOU DO!!!!"? And, when they inevitably screw it up, why do we act as it it's their fault? When you buy a car they hand you a key, when you buy a router, you have to design a lock!

So, for on behalf of the industry, for making all this more difficult then it should be, I apologize.