If our fathers can’t go farther online, we are all missing out…
Story byDavid Petherick
Scotsman David Petherick is a director & co-founder of several companies, and provides social media strategy & visibility services.(show all)ScotsmanDavid Petherickis a director & co-founder of several companies, and providessocial mediastrategy & visibility services. David became known as ‘The Digital Biographer’ after a 2007BBC radio interview, speaksRussian, wears the Kilt, and is a co-author for the books ‘Age of Conversation 2.0, & 3.0’.
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Pause for 200+ downloads
But I couldn’t do any of that, as there were about 270 different software updates trying to download and install themselves, as the machine had not been online since it was bought. I realised it would take about 2 hours for all of this to download and install, and only then could I make the computer secure against viruses and attack, and get the preferred browser installed. So I said I’d come back to do this when I had more time.
My father, who is an intelligent and intellectually curious man, watched some of this process in silent perplexion, and then asked me whether he should just take the new hardware back to where I got it, and perhaps consider getting a better, more modern computer. (It’s a year old roughly). He knew it was fairly inexpensive, but if it was a TV or a Car, he said, he wouldn’t put up with this sort of pointless time-wasting and unreliability.
I remember setting up my new cable broadband at home a few years ago – it was pretty easy, and it works really well, but the email account I was given (which I never intended to use, as I know how to set up my own domain and email) managed amazingly to get over 80 really nasty spam emails within a day of it being activated. Had I not had better knowledge, I’d probably still be resigned to deleting dozens of offensive messages every day, and I’d be paying £49 a year or more just to keep malicious viruses from trashing the data on my computer or allowing someone to go on a spending spree with my card or bank details.
Is this too much to ask?
It’s a question that hardware and software makers, as well as internet service providers, really need to address, because there is a huge potential audience out there that will use more, buy more, share more and get more fun and enjoyment from the online world – if only they could simply understand how to get it into their lives simply, reliably, and safely.
At the moment, that seems near to impossible, and I think there are huge numbers of people simply giving up on accessing the internet, because no matter who they turn to for help, it’s confusing, unreliable, costly, and therefore, just a waste of their time.
They will stick with the cost and inefficiency of 35mm film, ordering by telephone, printed mail order catalogues and walking to the bank to pay in and withdraw money forall the right reasons– because it’s clear, and it works, and they can trust it.
I think we have a long way to go before those words can be used to describe getting online for someone doing it for the first time – and that’s not fair, not good business, and the absence of those many millions of people is a loss to everyone who is online.
