Who needs tech skills?
By Nicole Kobie in Editorial
Posted in Uncategorized on
How much IT skills do casual users — or even office workers — really need to have these days?
Bill Thompson over at the BBC believes we all need more. I don’t disagree entirely — more security knowledge would be a good thing for most casual users, while it’d certainly help the industry as a whole if users knew enough to appreciate all the hard work that makes email show up where it’s supposed to, and things like that. He argues:
“Far too many people who use computers every day, and have them in their homes, aren’t even capable of applying the system updates that Microsoft and Apple automatically send out, leaving them with buggy and insecure systems vulnerable to all sorts of attack.”
Here’s the thing. He spends the first 10 of 21 paragraphs laying out his CV so we all know what a skilled tech-head he is, name-dropping Debian Linux, web servers and more in proper alpha-geek style. Though he clearly proves his extensive tech credentials, he shows he doesn’t know the other side very well — no tech ignoramus is going to keep reading past that first paragraph; I nearly didn’t, and I write about this stuff on a daily basis.
Programmers and software engineers and other IT Pros should be celebrated for their skills and talents, but that doesn’t mean receptionists, office workers and your mom need to know the inner workings of code.
Students need to be taught more advanced tech skills, that much is for certain — but the same could be said of many subjects. Don’t kids these days need to read better, improve their political understanding, and play more sports?
Thompson compares IT to cars, saying people should know what’s under the bonnet. Yeah, they should — it’ll save them money in the long run — but you don’t actually need to know how engines work to press the gas pedal effectively. I respect people who learn out of curiosity, but to expect it of everyone is insane.
Drop the car analogy for a second. Think about travelling — do you need to know how planes work in order to board one? Will it make your trip more fun? Does the pilot have the right to rant at you for it?
How about music — do I need to know how to play a guitar or how to work decks to enjoy it? Would a singer slam his fans for not knowing how to read sheet music?
How about toilets — yeah, you’ll save on plumbing if you can fix the pipes yourself, but it’s hardly a requirement. Your plumber might wish you knew not to flush random things down the commode, but it’s hardly a big deal if you can’t do it all yourself.
Everyone always thinks their area of specialty deserves more kudos than it gets, but our society needs people with a variety of interests and specialties — not just the ones Thompson prefers. He continues:
“The results could be far worse than being ripped off by unscrupulous engineers who offer them unnecessary upgrades, because these digital tools will increasingly shape society. Those whose understanding of IT stopped at learning how to use bold font in a word processor will be at a significant disadvantage, one that we should work hard to overcome before it is too late.”
It’s true that we all need to understand the affects of digital technologies on society. But people don’t need to understand coding to see the privacy implications of Phorm or Google, or be able to programme to see that security is a key issue for anyone online, or be an application engineer to realise they spend too much time faffing about on their iPhone.
Besides, as he rightly points out, cars had a wee bit of an influence on society, too (i would argue indoor plumbing has as well, but then I come from a cold country). People need to wake up and pay attention to what’s going on around them; anyone could have seen that cars would change the world and, I don’t know, make us walk less, without fully understanding the internal combustion engine.
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