Some fascinating insights by John Siracusa on the latest Hypercritical podcast regarding Chris Pirillo’s dad’s first experience with OS X.
We see clearly that while he has very little foundational understanding of how all of the pieces fit together he’s able to use the computer with a reasonable level of efficiency to accomplish the tasks that he wishes to accomplish. Interestingly, his attitude towards Google as evidenced by “The Google” makes it very clear that his understanding of how the Internet works is intrinsically linked to Google. Concepts of web servers, browsers and URLs are outside of his scope of knowledge and as long as he can get what he needs, that’s normal.
These observations lead me to understand perhaps a little better the complete lack of understanding demonstrated by the media industries notably Universal and the RIAA. This explains in great detail why they see the latest uprisings against the SOPA bill as evidence of “Google shills”.
There is a huge gap in the understanding of how the Internet works and even how computers work at a very basic level which results in this kind of confusion with regards to the Internet. They link Google as a force because these people view the Internet as nothing more than a portal which is viewed through Google. In fact their worldview hasn’t changed very much since the days of AOL. Their picture is skewed by a concept where everything goes through some kind of portal even though those who are educated in the domain know that this is not at all the case.
Unfortunately the only solution to this problem is massive technical education of people outside of the computer industry. And as we’ve seen historically this is something that just doesn’t stick even with people that have been using computers for decades. So it’s pretty much a futile cause trying to imagine that we can bring the current generation of managers up to speed. The biggest question that remains is just how pervasive this kind of knowledge really is in the next generation.