A Techie Rant For Our Times (And Place)

John C. Dvorak came to my attention at least a decade ago with a cable TV show on ZDTV — carried on the Amarillo cable system (Cox). He spent an hour each day explaining techie stuff about PCs and the Internet. The show came on late at night and I fell asleep to John C. Dvorak many a night. Perhaps his influence is subliminal, but I am an online subscriber to PC Magazine (free!) and I often peruse the table of contents in the e-mail and hit the delete key without opening a single content item. However, this time, Dvorak's article title — "The Dumbing Down of America" — grabbed me. I thought, "He's talking about Geezerville!" As a Web site developer for my principal community organization, the singles' club, I have thought a great deal about those folks that Dvorak (uncharitably) calls "computer-using dummies." Geezerville's largest community organization, ironically, is the Computer Club! That organization offers beginning courses: Windows 101 and Internet 101. However large the Computer Club is, the folks here who need remediation haven't taken those courses! Oh, how I wish that I could limit access to the Web materials that I am developing to graduates of Windows 101 and Internet 101! If this (fair & balanced) fantasy, so be it.


[PC Magazine]
The Dumbing Down of America
By John C. Dvorak

Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else think that the majority of today's computer users have not been trained properly in how to use a computer? I say this because people are still asking me (and my friends) very simple questions that could effortlessly be answered by the most simple of Google searches. In fact, when answering a question by a reader I often just Google it and send the page of results over without comment.

I began noticing this in my e-mail only recently, but the trend may have begun years ago: people asking really dumb questions that they could easily get the answers for themselves. But they ask a person rather than do simple research. I'm not talking about someone asking me what, in my opinion, is the best digital camera. I'm talking about someone asking me who makes digital cameras. Or where you can buy CompactFlash cards. Or where you get a program that unzips files. Or "Are there any word processors on the market besides Microsoft Word?"


It's actually kind of weird. These and hundreds of other questions can be easily answered by running Google, or any other search engine for that matter. Apparently, a large part of the population simply does not understand this. What's weirder is when you tell them to simply use Google to find out for themselves, you discover that they know all about Google but say, "Oh! I never thought of that!"

This sort of helplessness is a trend in the U.S. I'm not certain who is to blame. The government? The schools? Friends? Hollywood? TV?

It seems as if nobody knows anything except the names of a few popular songs and perhaps the names of some popular bands. To see this sort of mass ignorance you can catch Jay Leno's once-every-week-or-so Jaywalking segment, where the late-night entertainer goes on the street to ask people who are out and about the simplest of questions. The answers are absurd and jaw-dropping. He'll ask someone who says he or she is a college student, "Can you name one state that borders California?" The person will look puzzled and respond, "Chicago?" Over the years I have to assume that this segment has been subverted by its own popularity and some people just goof on the answers to get on the show, but to act like a brain-dead dingbat just to be on TV is pathetic in itself.—Continue Reading

Other TV shows have been done with a similar theme, focusing on students at Harvard and elsewhere. Few knew that the earth goes around the sun. Fewer still know even rudimentary geography, and nobody knows history or current events, although kids do know the names of band members.

What's weird about the computer-using dummies is that they have computers and still cannot figure out anything. The popular craigslist Web site, which is essentially a community bulletin board in the traditional sense of a bulletin board, is a nexus for these folks. Notes and messages are posted just like the ones you used to find at community supermarkets in the 1950s and 1960s, where people could post a card asking for a pet, or to sell a car or to find housing. Craigslist virtualized this and made it computer- and Internet-based. In there you'll also find the normal silly personals. "SWF, 31, slim but curvy, redhead, professional woman, never married, looking for soul mate to pamper me. Must like cats. No smokers or weirdos!" And you'll find the various cars and cameras for sale. But in this open system there are also the boneheads who can't seem to tie their own shoes.

They ask questions like "I just moved to the Marina. Does anyone know of a good grocery store nearby?" Or "I live on 23rd near Fitzgerald's Gym. Is there a bus that goes by there? I need to take a bus to Oakland. Do the buses go there?" And on and on. There are hundreds of these sorts of inane questions. Are these people so helpless that they will just anonymously ask a brick wall questions that they should be able to find the answers to themselves? After all, they have computers, or they wouldn't be able to post these questions. Can't they use the computers to find out the answers immediately?

Apparently not, and the trend appears to be worsening. It's almost as if the collective brain of the American public has been put into neutral. The only new variable here is the computer itself. Like machines that allowed us to minimize our need for muscle power to till fields and bend metal, it looks as if computers are expected to do our thinking in much the same way machines were expected to do our manual hard work. If that is what has happened, then we are doomed. Or at least the few independent thinkers who are left are doomed. The rest of the crowd will be happy as a clam, with an IQ to match.

John C. Dvorak is the current PC Magazine columnist writing "Inside Track," an essay and a weekly online column. These articles are licensed around the world. Also a weekly columnist for CBSMarketwatch, Info! (Brazil) and BUG Magazine (Croatia). Previously a columnist for Forbes, Forbes Digital, PC World, MacUser, PC/Computing, Barrons, Smart Business and other magazines and newspapers. Former editor and consulting editor for Infoworld. Has appeared in the New York Times, LA Times, SF Examiner, Vancouver Sun. Was on the start-up team for CNet TV as well as ZDTV. AT ZDTV (and TechTV) was host of Silicon Spin for four years doing 1000 live and live-to-tape TV shows. Also was on public radio for 8 years. Written over 4000 articles and columns as well as authoring or co-authoring 14 books.

2003 Award winner of the American Business Editors Association's national gold award for best online column of 2003.


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