On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 02:56:21PM +1200, Daniel Lawson wrote:

Why do people object to learning how to use a technology?

you missunderstand. there is a difference in learning something you will use every day vs. learning something you will use only once. there is absolutely no problem to learn how to use emacs. i only do not want to have to learn how to configure it.

Do you have the same expectation of a car? That you can jump in and use it straight away, without prior knowledge of cars?

the expense and time to learn to drive is one reason why i don't. (environmental issues are the other) people learn to drive because they are forced to.

They adopt a 'its too hard' or a 'I dont have time' attitude. This is very apparent with computers, rather than other technological advances. A lot of people will quite happily learn how to use a VCR, DVD player, advanced TV controls on their flash new 100HZ Philips TV, whatever. Yet they will balk, or even be 'unable' to learn a computer program interface that doesn't have pretty colours and isn't inherently obvious from a casual glance.

you are ignoring that the complexity of a computer differs by several magnitudes from those other devices you mentioned. and also there are a lot of people out there who have no clue how to use those devices. in order to type text a computer needs to come down to the complexity of a typewriter. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw by accepting computers the way they are now, you are standing in the way of progress. i do not want to adapt to the computer. nuff said. greetings, martin. -- by the end of 2001 i'd like to find a new job anywhere in the world, doing pike development and/or training and/or unix and roxen system administration. -- pike programmer Traveling in New Zealand (www|db).hb2.tuwien.ac.at unix (iaeste|bahai).or.at (www.archlab|iaeste).tuwien.ac.at systemadministrator (stuts|black.linux-m68k).org mud.at is.(schon.org|root.at) Martin B"ahr http://www.iaeste.or.at/~mbaehr/ ------------ WLUG - The Waikato Linux Users Group WWW: http://wlug.linuxcare.co.nz To unsubscribe, send an email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz with "unsubscribe wlug" in the body of the message. ------------ WLUG - The Waikato Linux Users Group WWW: http://wlug.linuxcare.co.nz To unsubscribe, send an email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz with "unsubscribe wlug" in the body of the message.