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A new outlook on technology
Mar 17, 2006
I'll never forget something I saw last week at the ETech (Emerging Technology) conference. This guy, a very smart technologist, is excitedly demo'ing his new software, which allows users to fly through hundreds of bitstreams - pictures, RSS feeds, e-mails, calendar stuff, and on and on - in the slickest way possible. He's pitching it as though it's supposed to make overloaded users more productive, which it won't, but at least he's identified the problem correctly.
And he stands there showing me this demo, very nice guy, pecking out each - letter - on - the - keyboard - with - one - single - finger. And I thought, you just spent a year of your life creating a tool to fly around information more quickly - and yet you could double your productivity by just learning how to type. (Or triple it, if it's Dvorak.)
Learn to type! I wanted to tell him. Pursue the technology that truly helps you, even if it seems basic and not new or slick. But of course I didn't say it. I couldn't, because that would break the techie rule of ACKNOWLEDGE THE COOL.
I re-learned something about the technology industry last week at ETech, where I presented bit literacy and Gootodo:
The tech industry is full of people who really, really like technology.
It should be so obvious, by definition, right? Birds of a feather: Aren't Star Trek conventions full of people who really love Star Trek? What's the big deal?
What struck me in San Diego was that technology doesn't need to actually help users, or improve their lives in some way, in order to look really, really cool. Something that looks cool and exciting to me (as MIT-trained geek) can also be largely irrelevant to me (as user advocate).
The love of technology isn't, by itself, for or against helping people - it's a different interest altogether. Now for the most part I do think that technologists tend to have an interest in helping people - but technology itself doesn't have a bias... and what you choose to love defines your outlook.
It's important to draw that distinction, I think. What some techies call great, cool, exciting, slick, compatible, open - all those have nothing to do with whether the technology is useful, productive, simple, valuable, meaningful, indispensable.
Sometimes - here's the real heresy - sometimes the best option for users might be less technology. It's less cool, and makes for decidedly less exciting press, but it could very well be the more useful option.
I propose that the technology industry begin to consider what is important for users, not only what's cool; what's going to improve people's lives, not only what's "hot"; what's going to make our jobs meaningful, not what we can cash out.
What I'm saying is, tech needs a new outlook.
(We need a new Outlook, too, but that's a whole other column.)
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If you want to see what I presented at ETech, read this...
...or ETech attendee Phil Windley's notes from my session:
...or my rough notes after returning from ETech.
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Update: Jason Fried from 37signals was nice to link to this column... it reminded me that my rant on "less" is hardly unique; Jason wrote Less as a competitive advantage last fall. Keep up the good work, 37sigs!
I totally agree with your technology analysis. We came to the conclusion ourselves at MemoText.com, where we originally were a tech company focussed on SMS technology. After a while we looked at our users and what they were using our technology for and ended developing a platform adding low-tech (IVR and Text-to-Speech) features to truly assist our users. The system is used to remind people to maintain a healthy medication treatment regimen. We focussed less on the tech, more on the users and ended up developing a more feature rich, relevant piece of technology.
Regards,
Amos
Mark Hurst wrote, in part: "...you could double your productivity by just learning how to type... Learn to type! I wanted to tell him...."
Although this wasn't the core theme of the article, I feel a need to underscore this point, and to share a secret.
I'm a fast, fairly accurate typist (keyboard-ist? sounds like a musician, which I'm not)and it helps me tremendously. I ponder how people in "knowledge worker" roles - who need to be at a computer most/all of their working moments, who don't have this basic productivity skill.
My secret? Mostly: hormones.
When I was a last-semester senior in high school and had easy electives to choose from, I chose typing ... not because I was visionary about my future or the role computers would play in my career, but because the typing teacher was young, fresh out of college, and *gorgeous*. I would venture a guess that our entire high school had an unusually high percentage of very proficient male typists... And despite our less-than-completely-honorable motivation waaaay back then, I'll bet we all benefit daily from the skills we learned.
Mark Y.
I'm with Mark Y, only my mother made me take it freshman year of high school (1986). I hated it, never had a use for it until about 8 years ago when I started my first real job.
I am one of the fastest typists (200 emp) at 70-80 WPM. That's frightening because I don't think that's very fast. My fellow IT colleagues are all around 30.
I emailed them the article...
Regarding the typing speed comments in your post, it was amusing to say the least; I am a one-finger typist myself, but this has nothing to do with productivity or otherwise; I could teach myself typing now, or I could spend my time designing my next app, & that's not too hard a choice to make.
Back to your story, so what, this guy you mention may need 2 hours to write a piece of code that the more-proficient typist might get done in 30 minutes; but then the latter will probably spend the next two hours IMing away purposelessly. So much for the added productivity! I'd go so far as to say that we slower typists may actually be more productive because we can think as we write, crafting carefully, as against the jet-speed typist.
To my mind, it's one of those things that simply doesn't matter, very much like it doesn't matter how fast or slow you speak (as long as you talk sense), or with what accent!
Juse needed to make this point :)
Funny thing is late yesterday as I was typing a post for my blog, my wife who is a court stenographer told me she should teach me how to type properly.
On the topic of software and users, As i am not a programmer or a techie, this is what i loook for in software products.
Ease of use is what wins me over.
Serge
Biz:
http://www.montclairconcierges.com
Blog:
http://sergetheconcierge.typepad.com
Anjali - Somehow that reminds me of the smoker who says, "I can quit any time I want... I just don't want to quit." ;)
Hmm. I couldn't disagree with you more, Anjali. Arguing that typing proficiency has no effect on the productivity of someone who spends all day long using a keyboard is an uphill battle, to say the least. And the relationship between good typists and purposeless IMers isn't well-established. :) I'd be suspicious of any software developer who can't type. If they can't be bothered to pick up this relatively trivial skill, what important and difficult skills might also be missing?
I agree with Mark's point: sometimes you have to acknowledge that the unsexy solution is The Right One. In this case, it's learning to type.
I can relate to what you're saying. I work at a large hi-tech company where I've started using the slogan "code is king". To most at the company (heavily engineering focused) a project is successful if the engineers are incorporating the lates technologies, development practices, and/or architectures. Whether the project is actually of any value to end users or whether there even is a target end user is not usually on the radar (until the project is released). Low-tech but highly valuable solutions are rarely considered much less adopted.
If you can't type, you're not worth hiring.
#1 Your less productive than someone who can type.
#2 Why haven't you learned to type by now?
#3 It tells me you can't multitask.
#4 You can't think as fast as me (and I'm not a genius by any standard)
#5 I go absolutely crazy watching someone type slowly on a screen when they are trying to explain or tell me something. I have no patience for you.
End of story.
I forgot one:
#6 If you can't type, you probably want to hire an assistant who can type for you. Therefore, you are too expensive for our company.
Thank you for an excellent call to action--we need to focus on the stuff that really does make us productive and to develop tools that achieve this end, as well. I just posted a write-up over on my blog, and I wanted to thank you for a great contribution.