Techno-dolts.
They`re all around us.
These poor unfortunates are, by the millions, baffled by their videocassette recorders, intimidated by their personal computers (many still sitting in the original cartons), flummoxed by their microwaves, befuddled by the extra buttons on their phones, scared of their food processors, stymied by the office`s new copy machine.
You know who you are.
Techno-dolts are not necessarily stupid. But they are confused. They are lawyers, engineers, editors, business executives. . . . ”You`re talking about almost everyone, really,” says John Bear, author of ”Computer Wimp” (Ten Speed Press, $9.95), a self-help book.
In fact, true techno-doltishness often requires some ingenuity. Unable to set the clock on their VCR, one couple covered it with tape, masking the ever- blinking ”12:00.” More primitive types simply prop a videocassette box against the front of the machine. All over the land, it seems, VCR clocks are relentlessly blinking acid green: ”12:00, 12:00, 12:00, 12:00, 12:00, 12:00, 12:00, 12:00.”
People always have had trouble using or understanding new things, says Richard Saul Wurman, author of the best-selling ”Information Anxiety”
(Doubleday, $19.95). But now a maelstrom of data is drowning us all. ”Now there are more things,” he says. And the things that there are more of ”are more complicated. So the problem is more visible in 1989-and will become even more visible in 1990.”
At the GE Answer Center in Louisville, Ky., open round the clock, the telephone rings 8,000 times a day, 3 million times a year, with consumers`
questions about GE refrigerators, TVs, washing machines. But queries about VCRs outstrip any others, says Answer Center spokesman N. Powell Taylor.
”Calls about hookups, calls about programming it. People never learn how to set the clock.”
One resourceful Californian is profiting from folks such as these. The classified ad, placed in a Berkeley newspaper, begins ”Flashing VCR?” and offers the services of someone to come by the house and set the clock.
A proud Philadelphia mother offers her 16-year-old son`s services to a neighbor befuddled by an unassembled gas grill. ”He`s good,” she promises.
”He can even make the VCR stop blinking.” (She still doesn`t understand how her son acquired such a facility. ”I don`t get it,” she says with wonder. ”I mean, his father went to Harvard Law but can`t open a can.”)
Charlene Guyer, a Philadelphia public relations consultant, is a perfect example of the breed. ”I have a Cuisinart that`s never been used,” she says. ”I have a memory button on my phone, but I haven`t used it yet.
”I have a great need for a car phone, but the idea of driving and using it-I`m sure I`ll reach Tokyo or something.”
Guyer has mastered the most basic operations of her VCR and her microwave: She knows how to play a videotape and to warm up a cup of coffee. But after five years, she hasn`t yet learned to change the film in her Nikon automatic camera. She regularly takes it to a camera shop for reloading.
In a cold sweat
Technology passes people like Guyer by. ”I feel that by the time I`ve accomplished the understanding of a machine, it`s already outdated,” she says. ”Or by the time I`m ready to buy, they don`t sell that model any longer.”
As Wurman wrote, ”Information anxiety is produced by the ever-widening gap between what we understand and what we think we should understand.”
Sandy Mayer, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa., computer instructor who runs training courses, says she knows people who are afraid of automatic teller machines. Others are loath to touch a computer. And when she introduces a computer pointing device called a mouse, incredibly, ”just the word is frightening to some.”
(People who barely use their computers nevertheless feel the need to justify the existence of a machine in their homes. Author Bear knows of a man who used his IBM personal computer only to catalogue his necktie collection and the dates he last wore each tie.)
Those who attempt to analyze the malady believe techno-dolts suffer from a kind of performance anxiety. Bala Cynwyd psychologist Stephen Lande treats many people for stress-some of it technologically rooted.
He sees patients who are ”computer-phobic” or ”VCR-phobic.” People worry that they will blow up the system. They fear criticism or disapproval if they make mistakes. They attempt to use a device without understanding the basics, then fail. And usually fail again.
Revenge of the Japanese
The techno-dolt syndrome is exacerbated because ”people think it`s their own fault that they can`t use a VCR or put together a bicycle,” says Wurman. But most of the instruction booklets are not understandable, Wurman maintains. ”The people who do them suffer from the disease of familiarity. They know so much about something that they forget the fundamental steps that lead people in the front door. They lead them in some strange attic window.” Judy Moreno`s job at a Philadelphia insurance company, where she analyzes risk management for hospitals, is highly complex. But there is no technological gadget in her apartment that she comprehends. ”When I read the directions,” she says, ”something turns off in my brain.”
No wonder. For the Black & Decker Dustbuster Plus, a cordless vacuum and, ostensibly, a simple time-saving device, the instruction booklet runs 11 pages.
In their ads, companies try, of course, to make all of their wares sound simple. ”If they advertised a product by saying, `Here`s a 128-page manual, learn to use your food processor in only six months!` how many would they sell?” says Bear.
At Bear`s neighborhood computer store in Berkeley, Calif., the sales and service people are unforgiving of customers who might phone in for help. They`re angry that the callers have simply failed to read their owners`
manuals.
At Panasonic`s U.S. headquarters in Secaucus, N.J., Stanley Hametz, vice president and general manager for consumer video, worries about manuals. The company has tried to simplify them. The manuals include flash cards for people who can`t cope with a pamphlet. The videocassette recorders have been simplified, too, with all sorts of neat features for the technologically lame. (In some models, the intimidating mass of buttons now is hidden behind a door.)
Panasonic has even attacked the dread flashing clock: A new feature provides battery back-up so that, in the event of a brief power outage, the clock won`t begin blinking.
”Unfortunately,” says Hametz, ”if consumers don`t read the instruction manual, they may not be aware of those features.”
And many don`t read the manuals, which they instinctively know will be incomprehensible. ”The Japanese write the instructions,” says Moreno.
”Maybe they`re paying us back.”
Floor models in demand
Frank Gilanelli runs a Philadelphia advertising agency, representing computer companies and other high-tech clients. Not that he`s any kind of whiz. If a product requires assembly, Gilanelli buys the floor model. He bought a gas grill that way, and his son`s bike.
In ”Information Anxiety,” Wurman addressed what he calls the ”some-assembly-required gambit.”
”I have no doubt that somewhere in the instructions for building a Saturn missile are the words `some assembly required,` ” Wurman wrote. ”This is instant intimidation, a phrase lightly tossed off and designed to make the user feel that any boob could put this machine together during a network station break.”
Dorothy Kalins, editor in chief of Metropolitan Home, recently confessed to techno-doltism in the pages of her own magazine. Kalins wrote that, after years of resisting, she finally succumbed and bought a microwave. But once it was actually in her kitchen, she immediately came down with an attack of what a friend of hers calls ”girlie physics.” Kalins found herself worried about radiation, afraid even to bake a potato. Eventually, she screwed up enough nerve to microwave popcorn for guests.
Microwaves terrify some folks, says Wilmington, Del., cooking teacher Pat Tibibian. (”People put rolls in there to warm them up. They turn to rubber and then, 30 seconds later, they`ve turned to cement.”) But Cuisinarts are worse, she says; they ”scare people to death.” Free Cuisinart classes are held periodically at Tibibian`s Creative Cooking shops in Delaware. Some of the students have never even removed their food processors from the boxes.
”Then,” Tibibian says, ”just when you think you have it figured out, the company comes out with a pastamaker.”
Don`t do her any favors
Naomi Graffman is a techno-dolt-and proud of it.
She writes on an Olivetti manual typewriter she has owned for more than 30 years. Now she has three of them, two given to her by friends. She`s squirreling them away-in case hers breaks down.
Ten years ago, her husband, Gary, head of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, wanted to buy her an IBM electric typewriter for her birthday. When he asked her what color she wanted, she burst into tears.
She wouldn`t even think of getting a home computer.
”I`ve seen people who`ve gotten these word processors,” she says.
”They spend three months or longer trying to figure out how to use them instead of accomplishing anything.” –
