Computer Novices Still Exist

A thought that has crossed my mind is: “Everyone knows how to use a computer now. Kids learn it on their own by practice. Adults have learned it from classes. Soon, the market will become so educated that all the training for the simple, basic computer skills will have nobody to sell to.” I also worry that the Internet (and computing in general) can’t continue its explosive worldwide growth forever. Soon, things will settle down, and the web will cease expanding at such a tremendous pace.

Wrong.

The Internet is huge and tremendously profitable and informative, but it still has a long, long way to go. There is still a huge need for computer scientists, content writers, technical workers, user interface designers of all kinds. I can easily see the Internet expanding far beyond where it is today. It’s pretty clear to me that computing is still in its infancy.

My Firefox-enlightened friends think that everyone uses Mozilla Firefox. They simply don’t believe me at all when I say that at least 60% of people whose computers I fix (and I fix quite a lot of them) use Internet Explorer as their primary browser. And in recent weeks, as more people have had computer problems and mentioned them to me or come to me for help, I think that percentage is probably much higher. Firefox users are still a minority on the web, despite recent improvements in computer literacy.

The Firefox Campus Rep program is all about reaching out to that 60% of college students whose lives would be significantly improved by their switching to Firefox.

I was thinking about this subject because of this blog post about the family tech support department. Yep, I’ve seen a lot of that. In what ways have you seen people fumble over computers?